


The (Dead) Spy Who Came in From the Cold

by x_art



Series: The Ribbon [4]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 11:40:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 50,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20545562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_art/pseuds/x_art
Summary: It was somehow fitting that the day Mulder discovered that his neighbors had turned into zombies was the day a dead man came back into his life. Which just went to show that fate was not only fickle, she had a seriously fucked-up sense of humor.





	The (Dead) Spy Who Came in From the Cold

April

It was somehow fitting that the day Mulder discovered that his neighbors had turned into zombies was the day a dead man came back into his life.

Which just went to show that fate was not only fickle, she had a seriously fucked-up sense of humor.

***

Mulder was rounding the last curve, taking the hill slower than usual because his knee was beginning to hurt, when his cell rang. He touched his hip pocket. To answer or not to answer, that was the question. It was a pointless bit of procrastination—he knew who it was just as he knew he was going to answer.

He dug the phone out. “Hamlet speaking.”

There was a pause and then Scully asked, “Mulder?”

He grinned. It had been a long time since he’d been able to surprise her; it was disturbing how good that made him feel. “In the flesh.”

“You sound out of breath. What are you doing?”

_‘Jerking off.’ _“Running. Almost done.” And yes, he hit the crest with a smooth burst of speed, his knee hardly giving complaint. “Hold on.” He slowed to a walk, holding the cell in the air so she wouldn’t hear his labored breath. When he was sure he could speak without a wheeze, he asked, “What’s up?”

“I just wanted to remind you about that CDC conference in San Die—”

“And you want to make sure I signed the papers.” He glanced around. Even though it had been an atypically warm April day, the park had been empty when he’d started out. It was now crowded but there was no one in earshot. He reminded himself there was no need for discretion and subterfuge—it was one thing to chat openly about government conspiracies and alien invasions, a completely different thing to discuss divorce. “Right?”

“The closing is in three weeks. I don’t want anything to go wrong.”

Scully’s tone was quiet and serene, but that was nothing unusual. She’d been quiet and serene for the last two years as their marriage wound down to nothing, as the ephemeral ties that had bound them together disintegrated into that same nothing. He’d hated her quietness then, he hated it now. “I get it, Scully. I’ll FedEx them to you today.”

But instead of saying, _‘Thank you,’ _or, _‘It’s about time’_—the last of which she had a perfect right to do—she murmured, “‘Scully.’ It’s been a long time since you called me that.”

Mulder stilled. It _had_ been a long time. Years, in fact and he couldn’t remember _that _Scully just as he couldn’t really remember _that_ Mulder. The sorrow he thought buried and gone curdled in his stomach. “You still call me ‘Mulder.’”

“I guess I do.”

Her voice was now wistful. He said nothing because there was nothing to say.

“So.” Scully cleared her throat. “Have you found a place yet?”

“Yeah.” Mulder began walking along the path. “I moved in a couple weeks ago.”

“Near your old apartment?”

“Nah, about fifteen miles south. In Southbridge.” He’d wanted something completely fresh and untested, a decision brought on by a state of mind no other psychologist would fail to identify. “It’s a townhome, though, so it’s got a backyard for William. He’s a little old for a sandbox bu—”

“Mulder.”

“He’ll want to meet us. I know it.”

She was silent a moment more, and then she sighed, “All right.”

“And when we get him back, we’ll split custody and fight over weekends just like every other American family.”

This time her, “Mulder,” was the more impatient, _‘Mulder, why did I put up with you so long?’ _variety. “That might be difficult as we’re in two different cities not to mention two different states.”

“I was just kidding.”

“All right.”

“I’ll email you my address.”

“That would be nice.”

“What’s the conference about again?”

“Epidemiological response in regards to nano-hybrid technology.”

“That’s a mouthful. Is your contact at the CDC going to be there?”

Scully’s response was even, “I believe so. He’s been instrumental in moving the project forward.”

“Hm,” was all Mulder said as he got out his car keys. He’d wondered more than a few times about this new person in Scully’s life. At first, he’d been just glad she’d made a friend, one she very casually referenced only when he asked. When he found out the contact was a man, his wondering took on a new shape. Still, he didn’t like to tease her, now that she was quite possibly dating again. He was surprised to find he didn’t mind; it somehow made things easier.

Mulder?”

A woman was sitting on a bench near the parking lot. Her back was to him, head bent to a book or phone. “Yeah?” He got in the car.

“I wa—” Scully hesitated once more. “I was wondering how the manuscript is going.”

Mulder paused, key just touching the ignition. He knew Scully so well. He could tell when she was happy, sad, mad, and all of the moods in-between. He also knew when she was lying. “Is this about me dating again?”

“No.”

“Because I _am _seeing someone.”

“Mulder, I hardly think a one-nine-hundred number could be called ‘seeing’ someone.”

“Scully, that hurts.”

He could hear her smile when she replied, “The truth often does. But really—how’s it going?”

“Stalled.” When she didn’t say anything, he added, “The publisher is giving me another two months for the first draft. It’ll be fine.”

“Let me know if I can help.”

Scully had never offered before anything of the sort before. “What’s wrong?”

Scully sighed again and when she spoke, her voice was clear of anything but the usual. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just tired. And two months isn’t a lot of time.”

Mulder tapped the key against the ignition, hearing the dull clink of metal on metal. “It’s sixty-one days which means I have to write a thousand words a day. I can do that in my sleep.”

“If you’re—”

“It’ll be fine. I’ll get going again, the book will be published and by next spring, I’ll be on the circuit and money will be rolling in.”

“Okay.”

She didn’t believe him, but there was nothing he could do about that just as he couldn’t make her tell the truth about whatever she wouldn’t say. They were both stubborn like that. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Sure. ‘Bye.” Scully hung up.

Mulder stared at the phone for a minute, watching his tiny reflection. Like a cat falling from a ten-story building to land gracefully on its feet, Scully’s transition back to her old life had been seamless. Teaching forensic science first and then working at Children’s National, her new career had skyrocketed. Lectures, consulting—she’d been able to write her own ticket and spent more time on the road than in an office. It was one of the things they’d fought about, back then, each argument getting nastier as the years went by.

It hadn’t helped that while her career had bloomed, Mulder’s had crumbled. The FBI had been a kind of prison, but prisons had a lot going for them. Schedules, quotas, structure. When the X-files had closed down for the last time, his boundaries had fallen away, showing the true form of his life. For a while, Scully’s very presence had held him together. For a while.

Now everything was uncertainty and loneliness, something he’d never cared about when he was younger, but he was almost fifty-six. Shouldn’t he be—

Mulder shook his head at where his self-pity had led. That was also per usual these days, as much as it pained him to admit it.

He tossed the cell on the seat and started the car.

As he was pulling out of the parking lot, he glanced at the woman on the bench. No, not reading—just slumped over, sound asleep.

***

By the time Mulder got home, the mail had arrived. It was the usual mix of junk, bills, and a couple large envelopes that had to be insurance ads. When he got inside, he put the mail on the hall table, went to the kitchen to get a bottle of water, and then unlocked the French doors. He stepped out on the covered porch.

His warm day had turned cold.

A white mass of clouds now filled half of the sky and the breeze had grown sharp. It was probably going to snow again, not that it mattered. He was going to spend the next two weeks in front of the computer, because he’d lied when he’d told Scully the book was stalled. Flatlined without a chance of revival would be a better description.

He was stuck on chapter six and no matter what he did he couldn’t find a way to make the transition to chapter seven work. His editor, the esteemed and peevish Sheila Farnsworth, had told him to send what he had and she’d help him. He hadn’t taken her up on her offer—she was good but had a tendency to hand wave his need for pinpoint accuracy. Sheila had said she understood he had to be thorough, but minutiae and perfection didn’t sell—explicit violence and mystery did. Mulder had given up trying to convince her that what the general public wanted didn’t really concern him.

Of course, he hadn’t wanted to write another book on serial killers in the first place. As far as he was concerned, two had been more than enough. What he really wanted to write was a series of monographs examining the recent technological advancements in the field of extraterrestrial research. Diagnostic equipment he’d never even dreamed of back in the day was now more than a possibility, it was a fact. He’d made a casual foray into the subject with Sheila and hadn’t gotten ten words out before she started laughing. And then she asked if he was serious. He’d told her no because, apparently, he’d become a coward. Or maybe he was just so very tired of fighting that particular fight.

Sheila instead suggested a new topic for his fourth book, something she said she’d come up with while in the shower. She wanted him to write a book on what separated a normal murderer from a serial killer. Figuring the mention of the shower was her fourth—or was it the fifth?—attempt at seducing him, he’d told her gravely that the subject had been done to death. She’d shrugged her shoulders and gave him some bullshit about the other books being inferior to his writing. They’d moved on to other topics but he knew it was just a matter of time before she brought it up again. She was like a pit bull, and not in the cute Scully-like way.

Mulder shook his head at the thought and took a sip of water.

He went inside soon after.

*** ***

_‘Have you or a loved one experienced pain or suffering or even death after using the drug Av—’_

Mulder muted the TV and then reached for his beer, carefully balancing his laptop so it wouldn’t slide off his lap again. He’d gotten little work done today. His sixty-one days was now fifty-nine. The lovely Sheila wasn’t going to be happy when they spoke during their usual Monday _just-to-keep-you-on-the-ball _Skype session.

Picturing Sheila’s expression when he lied to her once more, he sat the beer down and put his glasses back on. So, yeah, he hadn’t gotten much work done and maybe he shouldn’t have spent most of the day in front of the TV. He’d managed six new paragraphs totaling less than three hundred words. His last two books had run just under sixty thousand words. He’d now written—he squinted at the screen to check the word count—nineteen thousand, five hundred and six. Only forty thousand to go. Mulder grinned with no humor and then, after closing the laptop with a certain finality, he tossed it on the carpet. It landed with a thud and he thought he should do it again, actually throw it, maybe against the wall as hard as he could. When it broke, he’d use that as an excuse: _‘I had a tragic computer accident and I need more time because I had to start over.’_

Sheila would be conciliatory and sympathetic. And then she’d ask about his back-ups and when he admitted he hadn’t made any, she’d ask for her money back.

Money that he needed because he had bills and expenses and he wasn’t Scully, making a six-figure salary because she actually had skills to fall—

Mulder actually laughed as he removed his glasses, a snort that held real humor. One would think he hadn’t any skills or education of his own, that he hadn’t had a career that had been as meteoric as Scully’s. Well, that was until the need to find Samantha had been an itch he hadn’t been able to stop scratching, until the questions that had kept him up at night had turned to events he couldn’t ignore during the day.

And that was odd, wasn’t it? The urge to find his sister was no longer there. He’d accepted it, a process of attrition so subtle and smooth that he hadn’t been aware of the loss until it was lost. That went for a lot of things, though. When he saw an article about a strange occurrence or a missing person, he no longer thought ‘aliens,’ but just assumed the incident was the result of the normal, violent tendencies of mankind. When he came to the end of the day and realized he couldn’t recall the details of the hours, he didn’t think missing time, he just reminded himself that he was getting old.

A flashing light caught Mulder’s attention; he turned his head towards the TV. An ad was on, this one for Midnight Confessions, a service he’d called once and then never again because it had been clinical and cold. Generally, he was fine with his phone sex being clinical and cold so maybe he’d been tired that night, tired and out of sorts.

He made a motion, reaching for the phone, and then sighed and slouched back.

Mulder really didn’t want phone sex. He wanted the real thing, body-to-body, sweaty skin and moans he couldn’t hold back and all the other physical manifestations that were the by-products of passion. But finding the real thing was another hill he didn’t necessarily want to climb. When he’d purchased the townhome, he’d only been thinking of parks and high schools and built-in bookshelves, even though he’d had no real need for high schools. The neighborhood was family-oriented and had said so on the brochure. ‘Family-oriented’ meant the nearest bar was fifteen minutes away; the nearest strip joint was even further.

However…

However, there was that place on 27th, newly opened the week before. Mulder had been coming out of the Starbucks across the street—his bi-weekly attempt at normalcy—when he’d heard a bark of laughter. He’d looked over. Two men were hanging a big banner on a building across the street. The sign said: _‘Pete’s: Gay Friendly, Straight Friendly, Everything In-Between Friendly.’ _Wondering if a good part of the population would relish being stuck in the ‘in-between’ category, Mulder had strolled to his car as one of the men looked over at him. Their glances meshed and held.

The man was younger, maybe late thirties, and had close-cropped dark hair, a square jaw and a bright, pretty smile.

Almost galvanically, Mulder had smiled; the other man’s had widened.

Mulder didn’t pretend ignorance but he did fake regret, a half shrug and gesture with his coffee, saying silently, _‘I’d like to, but I have somewhere to be.’ _He had no idea if the man watched him drive away—he wouldn’t let himself look in the rearview. But now, nine days and a lot of frustration later, he thought about the man. Was he the owner or maybe co-owner or just a bartender?

It was only ten, early enough to go out. He could find a seat at the counter and check the place out, see if that pretty smile had been more than a smile. It had been a while since he’d indulged his curiosity and more-than leanings, but he was single now and no longer with an institution that marked and catalogued his every divergence. He was allowed.

But still, Mulder didn’t move and it was maybe ten minutes later when the phone rang. He answered without looking at the screen: “Hello?”

“Mulder?”

Mulder sat up. “Dana? Wha—”

“Mulder, listen to me, I’m—”

There was a noise, a sharp pop and what sounded like a grunt. The line went dead. At the same time, his TV lost the signal and a message appeared: _Complete loss of signal. Code 777. _

Mulder turned off the TV and repeated, “Dana?” There was no reply. Glancing over his shoulder at the unsigned divorce papers still on the hall table, he hung up and called Scully’s number. Her cell rang and rang. He got up and began to pace. “C’mon, where are you?” he muttered as her voice mail message came on.

Mulder hung up and tried again. This wasn’t about the divorce. She hadn’t been angry or impatient—she’d been scared. Scared and breathless and it had been years since he’d heard that tone.

He got Scully’s voice message again and unable to do anything else, he let it play out and then said, “Dana, what’s wrong? Call me back.”

Mulder hung up once more and stood there, at a complete loss.

He was no longer with the FBI. He had no weapon, no badge, no resources waiting at his fingertips, no contacts he could call on in a pinch. It was just him and he tapped the cell against his leg, mind scrambling and he realized he was shaking, almost panicked. It had also been years since he’d felt this particular brand of dread.

But he was an idiot. There _was _a contact he could still call on: Skinner. AD Skinner was still at the FBI, still doing his G-man thing. Skinner could help and Mulder was already dialing as he turned to the door, a wash of relief cooling the back of his neck. He’d call Skinner, they’d find Scully and things would be ok—

There was a man standing in the wide, doorless doorway.

A hulking black shape lit only by the dim yellow light from the back porch, the man was hunched over, his arms hanging at his sides.

“Hello?” Mulder said, adding a startled, inane, “What are you doing in my house?” Fear and anger burned away his shock. “Do I know you?”

The man didn’t answer. He made a shuffling motion, a side-to-side, all the more horrifying for being completely silent.

Charting his inventory of escape routes—only two, straight ahead through the door and around the man or to the left through the faux mullioned window that would hurt like a son-of-a-bitch—Mulder stepped to the left.

The man copied his move.

Mulder tried again, this time to the right.

The man did the same only this time he moaned.

“Fuck,” Mulder muttered because, yeah, that wasn’t good. All those years of training and experience were like proverbial dust in the wind because he couldn’t think what to do other than be a wimp and call 911. “Are you hurt? Do you want me to call the EMTs?” He held up his cell. “Better yet, I can call the authorities and let them sort this out. I know I’m new to the neighborhood and maybe this is your version of the Welcome Wagon but you’re gonna have to sleep it off some—”

The man moaned again and took a staggered step forward.

That did it—wimp, it was. “Yeah, okay, I’m calling the police.” Mulder backed up as he cancelled the call to Skinner and dialed 911. He was waiting on an answer, his heart in his throat and sweat warming his temples, when the man moved again.

Only this time the man didn’t stagger, he lumbered, forward to circle the sofa, moaning again but also growling as he bumped into the sofa and then the side table.

Mulder led the man on, edging towards the left, using the sofa as a barrier. _Yeah, big boy, follow me. Once I’m clear, I’m out of here and you’ll be trapped…_

It would have worked, his simple plan, except he’d miscalculated because the man wasn’t alone. There was another figure waiting by the French doors in the dark dining room, a man wearing, of all things, a suit and a tie. “So the idea is, you get off work and go rob houses?” Mulder said, turning to keep both strangers in his line of sight, his arms up in a spontaneous defensive position. “You boys really need to get a—”

Like something from a movie, both men moved and all hell broke loose.

Quicker than he would have thought possible, the first man leaped on the sofa and the guy in the suit limped forward. A loud bang shook the air. Startled, Mulder stumbled back but the intruders kept coming. Now up against the bookshelves he loved so much, he was reaching for the standing lamp when a short figure, masked and dressed in black, rushed into the room. The man in black pointed his gun at Couch Guy and pulled the trigger. Couch Guy moaned and fell back onto the coffee table.

Fingers wrapped around the lamp, frozen and barely able to breath, Mulder waited for the man in black to make his move.

In the foyer, another figure all in black had knocked out the guy in the suit; with one foot on the guy’s chest, the man in black shot the intruder in the chest.

The ‘ping’ of the silenced shot still echoing, Mulder tried to catch his breath and his wits.

“Hello?”

Mulder frowned, hearing the tinny voice, unsure of where it was coming from.

“Hello?”

Wits still scrambled, it took Mulder a second to realize the voice was coming from his phone. He looked at it, only then remembering he’d called 911. He lifted the cell to answer when the first man in black hurried forward and took the phone from him. A simple push of the button and the call was ended. He gave the phone back to Mulder. And then took off his mask.

Reality slipped and skewed once more and Mulder’s jaw actually dropped. _“Dana?” _Dressed head-to-toe in black Kevlar and nylon, Scully looked surreal, like something from a movie.

Scully smiled wearily. “Hi, Mulder, it’s me. You can let go of the lamp.”

Feeling like a complete idiot, Mulder uncurled his stiff fingers. He turned to the other figure. “I suppose that’s you, Walter. I was just about to call you. What the hell are you—”

With a hesitation Mulder didn’t miss, the other man holstered his weapon and then even more slowly dragged off his mask.

So yeah, goodbye reality, goodbye everything that ever had and ever would make sense because standing there, one black boot still on Suit Guy’s chest, one hand resting casually on the butt of his rifle was none other than—

_“Krycek?”_

Alex Krycek reached up and smoothed his hair down. And then he said with absolutely no trace of irony, “Hi, Mulder. It’s me.”

***

Swearing would get him nowhere. Jumping up and vaulting over the kitchen table to lunge at his most hated enemy would do nothing. Hell, even making a play for Scully’s weapon wouldn’t work because she’d very pointedly tucked the gun away when she’d suggested, _‘We should sit down because we have a lot of explaining to do and not a lot of time to do it.’_

Unruffled, like he was in a dream, Mulder had led Scully and the not-dead Krycek to the kitchen; he needed a drink and he kept the good stuff in the cabinet above the sink. But he hadn’t gotten the whiskey down; he’d made it to the table and then dropped into a chair because his legs were suddenly and weirdly noodle-like.

“I could use a drink,” Scully murmured. Krycek had stopped at the threshold.

Mulder jerked his chin. “You know where I keep it.”

Scully smiled wanly and then went to the sink.

The cupboard was too high for her but before Mulder could get up, Krycek stepped forward. “I’ll get it,” he murmured. “Whiskey?”

“Please,” Scully said, adding softly, “You said you were hungry.” She turned. “Mulder? We need to be on the road soon. Can I make us some sandwiches?”

Mulder made a broad, sweeping gesture towards the refrigerator. ‘_Be my guest, Scully and not-dead Krycek.’_

Giving him that look that said even unspoken sarcasm was beneath him, Scully sat the whiskey on the counter and then went to the refrigerator.

“Do you need any help?” Krycek asked.

Scully shook her head.

Hesitating once more, Krycek sighed and slipped the rifle’s strap over his head. He laid the rifle next to the whiskey and glanced at Mulder. Or rather, he glanced at Mulder’s left ear, and then pointed to the table, “May I…?”

Mulder grinned and made another sweeping gesture.

Krycek sat down opposite Mulder.

So, no vaulting or shooting or swearing. Just a thick silence that grew cumbersome and worse by the second. So the world had ended and hell had frozen over? Whatever. Life would somehow go on, _he _would somehow go on and this would all be…

Mulder shook off his verbal paralysis and took a deep, cleansing breath. Then he said, “You look pretty good for a dead guy, Krycek.”

Krycek shrugged.

It was true. Unlike the Krycek built from illusion and delusion, this Krycek had aged. His seal-dense dark hair was sprinkled with grey, his jaw wasn’t quite so firm as before and his neck was a little thicker. But his eyes, the eyes that had always seen too much and hid even more were exactly the— “I mean, that’s what you were, right? Dead?” Mulder glanced at Scully. She was very sedately making three sandwiches. “Or was I wrong?”

“You were wrong, Mulder,” came Krycek’s smooth reply.

And that was the same, too—Krycek’s smoky, thanks-for-the-great-sex voice was just the same and it was all too much. Mulder flattened both hands on the tabletop, leaned forward, and hissed, “_What? The? Fuck_?”

Scully put down the knife and turned. “I’ll explain everything but we’ve been on the road for sixteen hours and we’re hungry.”

Krycek’s bland demeanor and Scully’s rational, quiet words—words that implied a certain coziness with a fucking murderer—ratcheted Mulder’s anger even higher; he could actually feel his skin redden and burn.

“I told you, Dana,” Krycek said. “This isn’t going to work.”

Krycek made to get up but Mulder jabbed his finger and growled, “You, sit down.” He turned to Scully. “You, start talking.”

For a bare second, Krycek’s mask of serenity fractured to reveal honest emotion—an eye blink of what looked to be curl of lips, there and gone. He edged back down while Scully set a plate in front over Mulder.

“Well?” Mulder demanded.

“All right,” Scully said. “But I think you’re going to need a drink.”

“I’m fine.”

She shrugged and repeated, “All right.” She gave Krycek a plate. “Krycek, since you were part of this before I was brought in, why don’t you start?”

Krycek glanced at Scully and then at Mulder. He dropped his gaze to the tabletop and then, clearing his throat, he began to speak: “They’re calling it The Ribbon…”

***

Alien invasion he was used to. Monsters and deviants and just sick humans that needed years of medication and therapy he could handle. But zombies created by a wave of radioactive dust produced by a low-flying meteor entering the earth’s atmosphere in March that had, incidentally, travelled concurrent to a extensive solar flare was something else.

Mulder rubbed his eyes. “And this Ribbon’s effects are transmitted by touch, not bite or blood? It eventually kills the infected and the overall strength of this thing that acts like a virus but isn’t, depends on altitude, ground temperature, relative humidity, wind currents and—”

“And sheer dumb luck,” Scully interrupted softly, speaking for the first time since Krycek had started and finished. “We’ve seen towns only miles apart that have had remarkably separate outcomes. One was devastated, the other was not.”

“Any other factors?” Mulder said, adding a snide, “Other than sheer dumb luck, of course?”

Scully pressed her lips together, then said, “The CDC and the World Health Organization are still working on it. The thickness or thinness of the ozone layer might be a factor.” She’d pulled her hair back in a rubber band, but a strand had escaped; now, she tucked it behind her ear. “The meteor descended at a shallow incline over the Pacific Ocean. It arced across Canada and then dropped again over the mid-west. It finally crashed into the Atlantic. By then it was nothing but pieces of rubble.”

“Which means no remnants to examine,” Mulder said.

Scully nodded.

“And the sick can be killed but a non-lethal wound doesn’t slow them down.”

Scully nodded again.

“And, I’m assuming none of this hasn’t made the news because of—”

This time it was Krycek that interrupted him, saying evenly, his gaze still fixed on the tabletop, “Lack of interoperability, containment and interference. The Ribbon is interrupting pockets of signals from microwave towers and the bulk of our satellites. When they started to malfunction, end users flooded the systems causing a cascade that finished them off. Cable communications lasted a day longer before the overload was too much. The radiation from The Ribbon is wearing off but the atmosphere is still saturated.”

“My phone is still working.”

“Then you’re lucky.”

Grimacing at Krycek’s insouciant response, Mulder clenched his jaw. “And the containment?”

“We’re trying, as much as it’s possible at this point, to make sure people don’t panic and make things worse.” Krycek had eaten his sandwich and now he pushed the plate to the side. “One of those areas that Scully mentioned, the towns that were less than ten miles apart? They’re both gone, the one because the population was lost, the other because an infected person made it to the Sip ‘n Go and the clerk called the cops. The cops panicked. Word spread quickly, as far as we can tell. By the time we were notified and made it to the site three days later, over three hundred people were dead. Most had been murdered by their neighbors, some were suicides. The living were holed up in their attics and basements, waiting for rescue.”

Over three hundred. “Any kids? Left alive, I mean.”

Krycek finally glanced up. His expression lightened, just a little. “Seventeen. We transported them to Atlanta. They’re terrified but safe.”

Mulder couldn’t help a sarcastic laugh. “‘Terrified but safe?’ It will take years of therapy for them to get over it. If they ever do.”

“At least they’re alive,” Krycek shot back, meeting Mulder’s gaze head on, his tone losing some of its calm. “And they might be able to help us figure out a cure.”

“And then there’s that,” Mulder answered silkily. “Who’s this ‘we’ you keep talking about and why the _hell _are you two working together?” He turned to Scully. “He calls you ‘Dana’?” He hadn’t meant to say that last bit and he shut his mouth before he could add anything else.

“The ‘we’ is the CDC, WHO, the American, Mexican and Canadian governments,” Krycek said. “As well as the military and the few law enforcement agencies that we feel we can trust.”

“Mexico is in on this?”

“The Ribbon’s effects have been identified as far south as Chihuahua. We’ve notified them and they’ve mobilized. The problem is that part of the country is largely unpopulated. Any infected individuals could quite possibly carry the disease down to Mexico City and if that happens…” He shook his head, a steady back and forth.

Scully had also finished her sandwich—she swept a few crumbs off the table into her palm as she chimed in, “The contagion seems to lose strength over the period of four to five days like a normal virus, but it would be dangerous to assume that it’s then harmless. Or won’t mutate.”

“And you two?” Mulder said, speaking mostly to Scully, He was still angry, still confused, but his anger was starting to reform and reshape into something darker. “The last I heard, you hated his guts.”

Scully actually cracked a smile, a smile she turned on Krycek. “I still do.”

Krycek breathed a laugh.

“And you,” Mulder turned on Krycek, letting the anger and dislike bleed into his words because here he was, at the heart of this very black matter, “I saw you die!”

Krycek shrugged. “That wasn’t me.”

“Of course it was you!” Mulder shot back, remembering that moment in the cold garage under the Bureau, his own shocked stillness only recognized later as a very tiny, barely crystallized form of grief. Grief he had tucked away, unanalyzed, unwanted. “Who else would it have been—” He stopped talking, wanting to slap his forehead like a bad actor. “It wasn’t you,” he repeated, this time his voice dead, dazed.

Krycek nodded. “It was one of the shapeshifters. I was in Hong Kong at the time. I heard about it the next day.”

“So Skinner knew he’d shot the wrong guy.”

“Yes. Eventually.”

Which meant Skinner quite possibly knew Krycek was alive this whole time and never said a word… “What were you doing in Hong Kong? Selling state secrets again?”

Krycek glanced at Scully, then said, “I was on a job.”

“Who were you working for? Russia? North Korea?”

Slowly, Krycek shook his head. “Even given our past, Mulder, you don’t have a very high opinion of me, do you?”

He wanted to laugh again. “And that surprises you?”

Krycek actually considered the question before replying, “No, I don’t suppose it does.”

“Yeah, when your nearest cousin is a flatworm, the bar isn’t very high.” It felt good, digging in where he knew it would hurt. “Who’s your employer now?”

Krycek’s even expression didn’t change. “I’m working for the CDC as one of their project facilitators.”

The words made sense. They were common, everyday words; Krycek hadn’t shouted them or whispered either. He’d just stated them with that same unnatural calm. And maybe that was why it took Mulder a second to get it, a second for the meaning to seep into him like sludge, like black oi—

Mulder turned to Scully. “Tell me it’s not true,” he urged. “He’s not the person you’ve been talking about for a year, right?” He wasn’t sure what he felt most, furious outrage or a sick kind of betrayal. _Scully, how _could_ you?_

Scully cleared her throat and then shared a look with Krycek. Without a word, Krycek rose, picked up his rifle and left the room. Scully waited until they were alone before saying, “He is.”

Mulder was halfway to his feet before he knew it but Scully grabbed his arm.

“Mulder, listen…” She let him go. “I met him during one of my consultations. A young girl had contracted smallpox and the clinic her parents took her to used stem cell technology. They were trying to alter the chemical structure of the virus. It had the opposite effect and she was brought to Children’s National. By the time I examined her, she was barely alive. We called the CDC and they sent a team of specialists. Krycek was among those specialists.”

Mulder slowly sat back down. He remembered the case; it had been in the news for days—he’d had no idea that Scully had been involved in any way. “He’s not a doctor.”

“No, but he’s experienced at getting disparate groups to work together. He’s experienced at getting materials and equipment the CDC might need.”

“Meaning he cheats and lies and blackmails people into doing what he wants.”

Scully raised an eyebrow. “I mean nothing of the kind. Yes, I was shocked when he walked into the ward at Children’s. I refused to work with him at first. I actually called AD Skinner. He informed me that Krycek was no longer wanted by the Federal government.”

So Skinner _did _know. It was like a nightmare. Or a supremely screwed-up joke. “He paid them off.”

“Doubtful. I think it had more to do with a regime change.”

“Even so…” He shook his head.

“The girl was dying, Mulder, and I needed to do something. By the end of the day, Krycek had found an expert on stem cell research in Berlin and flew him to Children’s the next day. The girl lived and afterwards we…” She shrugged. “He’s been with the CDC for eleven years. He’s good at what he does.”

Eleven years. That bastard had not only been living and breathing all this time, he’d found another career and thrived at it. “The expert from Berlin has been with the CDC for eleven years?”

“Mulder.”

It was like being chided by his mother and his only response was a weak, “You expect me to play nice when you waltz in with the man I hate most in the world? The man I’d most like to see dead?”

Scully’s expression muted to a sad frown. “Even after all these years—you can hold on to the anger that long?”

It was his turn to chide, to say, “Scully,” even though she was sort of right. The anger was there but he wasn’t sure if it was the real deal or a facsimile thereof.

Scully leaned forward. She’d colored her hair the year before and the light from above made her hair glow a soft yellow. “Never mind all that for now. I understand why you’re shocked and angry. What I don’t understand is why you’re _only_ shocked and angry.” She smiled again. “I would have thought you would have tried to strangle him by now. Or at least, break a lot of things.” She reached out, an aborted effort. “Why haven’t you?”

“I’m waiting until the time is right.” Or rather, he was going to wait until he was alone. That way he could break those ‘things’ without anyone being the wiser. “And I’m not going to do what you did—I’ll never forgive him.”

“Okay.” Scully nodded thoughtfully. “Can you wait to exact your revenge until we’re finished? We really do need him.”

“For you, Scully, anything.”

She gave him another look, this one bordering on a smile, and said, “Any more questions?”

“Only a thousand but I suppose the only one that matters is, what are you doing here?”

“The CDC needs help with a vaccine. They called me in.”

“And me? It can’t be a coincidence that you arrived just in time to rescue me.”

He’d meant it as a joke but by the depth of Scully’s new frown, it had fallen flat. “Actually,” she said, “it is. We had no idea this area had been affected. According to our data, The Ribbon missed it by at least fifty miles.”

“Which means some of the zombies traveled here.”

She nodded. “I’m afraid so. We found three others wandering the streets. We took care of them.”

“Which means?”

She shrugged, a gesture that was unpleasantly like Krycek’s. “We use the darts in populated areas so as not to frighten the locals. If there are only a few locals to frighten, we use bullets.”

He wanted to say that her tone was remarkably dispassionate considering the topic, but Scully had always been the down-to-earth, composed one. “Which means you’re here to see me.” He forced a laugh. “I’ve been out of the field for years; why come to me?”

“Because I have a proposal for you.”

“And that is?”

“We’re losing the battle, Mulder,” came a voice from the dining room. “And we need your help.”

Mulder twisted around. Krycek had returned and was leaning against the doorjamb. He’d probably been there the whole time, the pussyfooted bastard. “It’s a battle now?”

Krycek nodded. “Three weeks ago, we’d achieved close to seventy-percent containment and then an outbreak occurred. It spread quicker than we anticipated. New York is a disaster. From what we can tell, factions have formed and it’s chaos but we really don’t know because every team we sent in hasn’t come back. The other major cities are doing okay—local governments are saying it’s a problem of solar flares. However, we just discovered we have a leak—a reporter showed up at the Atlanta office this morning asking about zombies. If the media hubs were up and running, we’d be in trouble. As it is, we’re racing against the clock. When the satellites do come back online, we’ll have two or three days before the entire nation knows and if that happens…” Krycek pushed away from the jamb and sat down again. “That’s the bad news. The good news is we think we have a cure.”

“It took five weeks for you guys to figure it out?” Mulder asked.

“We’ve been working non-stop, Mulder. Having patients that fought off the virus helped.” Krycek rubbed his temple and Mulder saw the first hint of weariness. “The other clock we’re racing against is Mother Nature. This virus loves heat and humidity and spring is around the corner which means the South is a petri dish set to explode. There are whole pockets that will soon be lost if our cure isn’t effective. Our only choice is to move forward with what we’ve got and perform containment, isolation, and inoculation.”

“What is this cure?”

“A typical vaccine,” Krycek answered. “Scully can give you the details, but basically it’s a form of the virus in a muted stage. We’ve tested it on some of the infected but—”

“Wait,” Mulder said, gleefully pouncing on that bit of information. “You’re testing it on _people? _What about rats and mice? What about do no harm, Krycek?”

“I’m not a doctor,” Krycek reminded Mulder. “And rats and mice and other animals don’t get sick. Only people are affected, and as far as I’m concerned, those people are already dead. A little more death won’t hurt them.”

By Scully’s suddenly sour expression, she didn’t agree with that and Mulder pounced on that, too. He jerked his thumb towards Krycek and said to Scully, “I get that his moral compass is still broken but you’re all right with this?”

“I don’t have a choice, Mulder,” she said. “I’ve spent weeks wrestling with my conscience. It’s too late for all of that; we just need to save as many as we can.”

The words were like something from a bad late-night horror movie and he sat back. “I still don’t see how I can help.” He glanced up at the clock on the stove. Eleven forty-seven. They’d been talking for almost two hours. “My zombie killing skills are a little rusty.” Everything about him was rusty. Case in point: the woman at the park the other day. Special Agent Fox Mulder, FBI, would have at least gone over to see if she was okay. He hadn’t even thought about it, and that was sort of odd, wasn’t it? It was as if he were perpetually half asleep and if it was just Scully sitting in front of him, he’d ask her if she’d noticed anything else. But there was no way in hell he’d bring it up while Krycek was in the room, watching him with that calm, creepy gaze.

“Actually,” Scully said, turning her unfinished glass of whiskey around to catch the light, “I was reluctant to bring you in but Alex insisted.”

‘Alex,’ Mulder thought with fresh outrage. _Alex. _“Because?”

“Because I need one of us alive to be there for William when this is all done. It’s going to be dangerous and I—” She blinked and shook her head. “I understand that this takes precedence over everything but I can’t bear the thought of him being out there with no one—” She stopped again, this time swallowing hard.

Mulder covered her hand, only then seeing that Krycek—_Alex—_had leaned forward as if he were going to do the same. “William will be okay,” he said, his eyes locked on Krycek’s, daring him to make a move. “Tell me about this plan of yours.”

Scully cleared her throat and then slowly drew her hand away, giving Mulder an almost sheepish glance. “It’s fairly simple. We need people that can help…” Scully paused, searching for the words.

“Facilitate,” Mulder interjected drolly, playing the fool to give Scully time to recover.

Scully nodded. “That’s as good as term as any. They’re to take samples of the vaccine and get it to processing centers around the country by any means necessary. The lab in Atlanta is working overtime. They should have two thousand units ready by tomorrow morning.”

“That’s not a lot, considering.”

“It’s not,” Krycek agreed. “But the vaccine takes time to produce and time isn’t something we can bend or make more of. Unfortunately.”

“Why not just email the—” Mulder remembered and finished with, “Email problems?”

Krycek nodded. “We emailed the formula to a lab in San Francisco but we never heard back and their line is dead. If time wasn’t a factor, we’d wait, but…” Krycek shrugged.

“So you’re giving the samples to your Pony Express and they’re going to deliver it to the labs. How are they getting there? If, as you say, there’s going to be a panic, won’t that panic shut down the airports and highways?”

Krycek actually smiled. “It will,” he said. “When I mentioned that to my bosses, they were actually surprised. It’s not their fault—they’ve been working twenty-four-seven and mostly focused on the broad strokes, not the details.” He picked up his plate and leaned sideways to put it on the countertop. “Our plan is to hand off as many samples as we can afford to select military and law enforcement teams. They’ll use various means of transportation. Hopefully, the samples will reach the nearest facilities by tomorrow evening.”

“‘Hopefully,’” Mulder repeated. He’d said it without any heat but for the first time, Krycek reacted.

With a speed that shouldn’t have been so shocking, Krycek was on his feet, his gaze no longer passive. “It’s been thirty-eight days, Mulder. Thirty-eight days since we got the first reports. We were on the ground in less than two hours but this is such a huge country and so many of the locations are—” Krycek ground to a stop, his jaw working, his eyes bright. He turned to Scully. “I’m tired. I’m going to wash up and get some sleep. We need to leave by twelve-thirty. I moved the bodies to the porch.” He stalked out of the kitchen.

Mulder listened, half in a daze as Krycek went upstairs, as the water in the bathroom closest to the stairs was turned on. “I suppose my next question is how is he so familiar with my house?”

Scully shrugged. “I have no idea.” When Mulder raised an eyebrow, she added, “I’m tired, too, Mulder. Do you mind if I lay down on your sofa?”

There were a million questions queuing up, each wanting to stream forth, but Scully looked as exhausted as she said she felt and he could only say, “There’s a blanket in the hall closet if you need it.”

“Thanks.”

Scully got up and was almost out the door when Mulder said, “Scully?”

She turned. “Yes?”

He shouldn’t ask because he didn’t really want to know. She’d lied to him again so it was probably pointless asking, but… “If this whole thing hadn’t happened—” He gestured, taking in the front room and Krycek upstairs. “Would you have told me about… About him, if this hadn’t happened?”

Her mouth turned down and her eyes grew sad and for once, she looked her age. “No, Mulder, I wouldn’t have told you. What would be the point?”

***

Mulder sat frozen at his own kitchen table, Scully’s bleak words repeating endlessly until they crashed together in a meaningless jumble of nothing. After a time that felt like an hour but was only minutes, he stood up and mechanically washed the dishes and put them away.

Out in the hall, there was a thin blood trail leading to the front door. Sighing because, really, couldn’t Krycek have been a little neater? he went back to the kitchen and got a rag and a bottle of Windex from under the sink.

He was on his knees, wiping up the blood when a shadow made him jerk and twist around. It was Krycek, on the stairs.

“Windex?” Krycek murmured with a lift of one eyebrow.

Mulder raised the bottle. “It’s perfect for streaky windows _and_ blood trails. Who knew?” His smile died as he returned to his work, adding quietly, “It was all I had.”

Krycek came up behind him. He crouched and reached out. “I’ll take care of it. If you’re going, you need to get ready. We leave in ten minutes.”

“I suppose you’re used to cleaning up blood.”

There was a moment, dark and heavy, and then Krycek said, “You know I am, Mulder.”

Feeling almost betrayed that his jab wasn’t met with anything but acceptance, Mulder handed over the bloody rag and the Windex. He pushed to his feet. “All right,” he said as he climbed the stairs, “but all I’ve got are jeans and t-shirts. My sexy black Kevlar is at the cleaners.” He heard an exhalation that might have been a laugh.

That soft sound didn’t get past his defenses but it stayed with him all the way upstairs and all the way to his bedroom.

***

When Mulder returned, he found Krycek and Scully waiting by the door. Krycek had retrieved his rifle and Scully was fidgeting with her vest in that way that said she was perturbed by something and determined not to show it. Krycek was frowning at nothing. Looked like there was trouble in paradise and Mulder asked with a smile, “Did you guys lock up?”

He’d been joking and expected the negative, but Krycek nodded. “I checked the doors and windows and your stove.”

So much for getting a dig in. Mulder pocketed his keys and gestured. _Lead the way._

Outside it was cold and quiet. The former was expected but the latter was a surprise because there were a dozen men and women standing on the tiny patch of lawn. They were dressed the same as Scully and Krycek. A few met his gaze; most didn’t.

“They’re with us,” Scully whispered, pointing to a line of black SUVs. “We’re flying out of Potomac Airfield. I’ll tell you more in the car.”

As if they were automatons, the teams divided into groups and marched to the SUVs. Mulder followed Scully and Krycek to the first, surprised when Krycek got in the driver’s seat. He must have made a noise because Scully looked over her shoulder as she opened the front door. “Did you say something?”

“No.” Mulder got in the back and pulled the seat belt over his shoulder. They were rushing to prevent the zombie apocalypse and the one-armed dead man was driving. It seemed foolhardy but this wasn’t the first time Krycek had surprised him, right? Way back when, on the run from the fake Billy Meyers with a pregnant Scully in tow, Krycek had saved the day. _‘Get in,’ _he’d ordered, right after running Billy over. ‘Get in.’ As if slamming into an alien monster was a normal, everyday thing. As if he’d been waiting in that street all night so he could drive to the rescue. It had been the craziest moment of the craziest day and Mulder remembered the momentary relief he’d felt, the bizarre sense that things would be okay because Krycek was there.

But, he reminded himself, his stomach curling, that hadn’t been Alex Krycek, had it? That had been the fake Krycek and what did that say about his fucked-up psyche that now that he knew, he was almost disappointed it _hadn’t _been Krycek running to the rescue?

There was something there, some inky knowledge edging to the surface of his consciousness but Mulder pushed it back down. He was simultaneously tired and jazzed and couldn’t handle any more epiphanies. “So, Potomac, huh? Why there?”

It was Scully that answered, “Because we have a plane waiting for us.” She turned to look over her shoulder again. “We can’t take any chances—the larger fields might be compromised.”

“So you guys flew in from Atlanta and then, what, flew up here?”

“No, we met in DC first.”

No wonder the rest of the team had barely glanced at him. If time was of the essence, how much had they lost by making a stop in Southbridge to pick up an unimportant FBI has-been that didn’t even have proper black clothes? At least his leather jacket was black. Well, sort of black—it was old and greying with age. Kind of like him. “Huh.”

Scully gave Mulder a quick one-over. “It’s about an hour drive. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

Mulder glanced at Krycek. Well, the back of Krycek’s head. “Sure,” he said, wrapping his arms around his chest. “Wake me when we get there.”

***

No one woke Mulder when they got there. He was mostly asleep, drifting in an out of true sleep when he became aware that something was wrong.

“Damn it,” Krycek muttered.

“Go around them,” Scully replied.

“I can’t.”

Mulder sat up and rubbed his eyes. “What’s up?” He peered out the tinted window. It was still dark and they were on 95. Up ahead a sign said, _‘Newington 5 mi.’_ So they were only five or ten miles out of Woodbridge and not anywhere close to Potomac Airfield. They were also in the middle lane, surrounded by a crawling mass of traffic. “What the hell?”

“The news must have broken,” Krycek said, his voice tight and low. _“Shit.”_

Two lanes over, a car veered right and crashed into another car. “We have to get off this road.”

“I know that, Mulder,” Krycek growled.

“No, I mean…” He took off his seatbelt and slid across the seat. To the left on the other side of the broad median, the highway was practically empty. “Everyone’s heading to the airports. It will take us hours to get to the bridge and more hours to get to the airport and it probably won’t even be open. There’s a gap in the barrier. Go back. Go south.” He leaned forward and grabbed Krycek’s shoulder. Krycek turned his head; the pale glow from the highway’s sodium lights lining the curve of his cheek. “Go south! We’ll _drive _to Atlanta.”

Krycek looked at Scully and then said, “Call it in.” And then he jerked the wheel and literally shoved the other cars out of the way. Amid the sudden blaring of car horns, he took the median at a sharp angle. With a jounce and a bounce, they were back on the road, now going south.

Mulder swiveled around. The other SUVs had followed and were racing to catch up. “There goes your insurance, Krycek,” he murmured.

Krycek snorted. “Don’t sound so happy about it.”

“Yeah, well, you’re a menace with a car as well as a gun.”

Krycek tightened his fingers around the steering wheel. “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

Mulder wasn’t sure how long their sniping would have continued because the nascent anger was starting to rise, but Scully said, “Seriously?” And then, “We don’t have time for this.”

Mulder shut his mouth and sat back.

Krycek sighed and said, “Sorry.”

“Holy crap,” Mulder muttered because Alex Krycek, murderer and liar and traitor, had just apologized. The world was indeed ending.

***

Scully dropped off to sleep a few minutes later. Mulder tried to do the same but couldn’t. He spent the time gazing out the window, obsessing over the fact that the world had ended—on a Wednesday of all things—and that Krycek and Scully were far too comfortable with each other.

And what about that? He’d thought about it before, wondering if Scully was dating her contact from the CDC and shit, he really, _really_, didn’t want Scully to be dating Krycek. Just the thought made his stomach flip and his chest burn.

“Scully?” Krycek said.

Scully roused and sat up. “Hm?”

Krycek nodded to the exit coming up. “We need gas.”

“It’s two in the morning,” Mulder answered before Scully could. “They’re probably closed.”

Krycek looked in the rearview mirror. “We need gas, Mulder.”

“Here we go,” Mulder said under his breath and then, louder, he added, “Do you promise to bail me out when I land in jail after all this is through?”

“When all this is through, if we survive, jail will be the last place you’ll be.”

“That’s comforting. I think.”

Krycek didn’t answer; he signaled, then rolled into the gas station’s lot in a smooth ark and stopped in front of a pump. As if they’d practiced it, the other SUVs did the same, each pulling to a stop beside the other pumps. Krycek got out of the car; Scully did, too.

“Be right back,” Krycek said.

“See if they have sunflower seeds,” Mulder called out.

Krycek didn’t pause. “Get your own snacks, Mulder.”

Mulder grinned and got out of the SUV. “It’s like taking candy from a baby.” He turned to Scully. “Need anything?”

She opened her mouth to say something and then sighed as if concluding again, ‘_What’s the point?’_ “I got you provisions but it’s all on the plane. Here…” She dug something out of her pant’s pocket. It was a roll of bills.

“Where were you when I was in Vegas?”

“You hate Las Vegas, Mulder. And we’re all carrying cash for instances like this.” She gave him a sheaf of twenties. “Leave them on the counter. Hopefully the owner is still in town and will get it.”

_Hopefully the owner isn’t dead, _Mulder thought and didn’t have time to say because just then, the station’s fluorescent lights burst to life with a pop and a hum. The pumps followed a few seconds later, the LED screens each displaying ‘$50.00’.

“And how does he know how to do _that_?”

Mulder’s tone wasn’t exactly snide but Scully glanced at him as if it had been. She unhooked the nozzle, saying, “I’m just glad that’s part of his skillset.”

“Skillset,” Mulder muttered as he headed towards the station’s small store. _Skillset. _

Christ.

Inside, Krycek was nowhere to be seen. Mulder went to the refrigerators and grabbed water for himself and a Diet Coke for Scully, just in case. He was standing in front of the snack aisle, deciding between pretzels and popcorn, when Krycek came through the door in the back. “Should I check your pockets to make sure you didn’t steal anything?” Mulder asked without turning around.

The words were stupid but all Krycek said was, “Be my guest.”

“Hmph,” and then because it was never good to let Krycek get away with anything, he added, “So tell me the truth—why am I here and don’t give me that bullshit about you needing me. What’s going on?”

Krycek stopped at the end of the aisle to examine the chips. “It’s the truth; we do.”

“Oh, please.” Mulder shook his head in disgust and grabbed a bag of peanuts and then the pretzels. “I said no bullshit.”

“It’s not.”

“And you and Scully?” Mulder said, switching tactics. “What’s going on there? Are you sleeping with her?”

Reaching for a bag of popcorn, Krycek paused. “What?”

Mulder turned to face Krycek. They were about ten feet apart but the distance might as well have been a foot. Or a hundred because under the cold blue light of the fluorescents, he suddenly felt alone and on the outside and all the rage he’d been tamping down flared and surged. “You heard me—what’s going between you?”

“You’re jealous,” Krycek said thoughtfully.

“Of course I am; what did you expect?” He had to fight to maintain outrage—Krycek’s surprise hadn’t been feigned.

Krycek frowned. “But you’re getting divorced. She told me—” He hesitated and then said, “No, we’re not sleeping together. We met just like she told you.”

“And now we can add eavesdropping to your list of crimes.”

“Your townhome isn’t that big, Mulder. I heard everything you said.”

“Krycek,” Mulder said, almost laughing. “Is there anything about you that’s not a cheat and a lie?”

Again, his words and tone were mild but Krycek reacted as if struck. His cheeks flushed and his eyes hardened to glass. “I’m going to check the perimeter.” He tossed the popcorn at Mulder but missed his aim; the bag fell to the floor at Mulder’s feet. “That’s for Dana.”

Krycek turned to go but then paused. “If this were any other operation, Mulder, I would gladly have left you behind. But we need you; the incident outside of Woodbridge is a perfect example.”

The station’s door chimed as one of the team—a woman with dark skin and closely cropped hair—came in. She glanced between Mulder and Krycek, her eyes opaque and distant.

Krycek nodded and then left the store.

“He’s angry because they’re out of Mountain Dew,” Mulder said, smiling.

The woman raised an eyebrow and didn’t smile back.

“Exit stage right,” Mulder muttered, feeling like a complete idiot. He picked up the popcorn and went to the register to tuck the money under the mat on the countertop. He hurried out, telling himself he wasn’t running from the woman’s assessing gaze.

It had started to rain while he was inside and the damp night air was blessedly cool on his hot face. He drew a deep breath. What was it about Krycek that always made him lose it to the point of simplistic, animalistic reaction? One look, one smart remark, and common sense took a nosedive out the window.

Well, not always.

In the beginning it hadn’t been like that but he hated thinking about those days and weeks, missing Scully so bad it was like an ache, working with the too-pretty newbie who actually believed what he believed…

Sometimes having an eidetic memory was a pain in the ass but Mulder had learned long ago how to shove this particular memory back in its particularly deep closet and he was almost to the car, congratulating himself on another successful feat of self-deception when movement caught his eye. He squinted, making sure he was seeing what he actually was seeing. Yeah, coming down the slight incline from the service road to the gas station was a— “Dana?”

Scully was screwing the gas cap on; she stopped and followed his gaze to peer around the rear of the SUV. In an instant her entire body stiffened and she called out, “Alex! Garcia!” Without waiting for a response, she drew her weapon from her thigh holster and pointed it at the woman and girl that were stumbling towards the entrance to the property. “Ma’am,” Scully called out, “I need to you to stop.”

The woman didn’t flinch, didn’t pause.

One of Krycek’s team, a tall woman with hair pulled back in a long black braid, moved from behind one of the SUVs. Gun raised, she crept to the right, probably in the hopes of flanking the woman and child.

“Please stop!” Scully called out to the woman, this time edging away from the car and the pumps.

The woman kept coming.

Arms full, wet from the rain, Mulder watched helplessly as the drama unfolded.

The parking lot was huge, no doubt to accommodate big rigs and trucks. It had three angled rows of pumps that were between the rest of the team and the woman. If anyone took a shot, it was more likely they’d hit a pump and not the woman.

Scully must have reached the same conclusion because she muttered, “Damn it,” and then much louder, “Ma’am, stop!”

It was no use; the woman dropped the child’s hand and made a beeline for Scully. Finally, Mulder acted.

He dropped his groceries and jogged to the left, drawing the woman’s attention. “Hey!” he called out, gesturing. “Over here! I can help you.”

This close, he could see the woman was Caucasian with stringy blond hair and thin to the point of emaciation. Her skin was red and bruised, as if she’d had too much sun and then got in a fight. She paused and swayed, clearly wavering between Scully and Mulder as whatever was left of her old self waged war with what had to be her new biological imperative. Apparently, it wasn’t much of a choice; with a moan and a groan, she lurched back towards Scully.

“No!” Mulder shouted, leaping forward. He’d only taken two steps when a shot rang out and then another. The first bullet hit the woman. The second killed her. Mulder had crouched instinctively at the first shot and he was maybe ten feet away from the woman when she dropped like a stone. He straightened up, somehow not surprised when Krycek strode by, gun barrel smoking in the cold air.

All this time the little girl had done nothing but now she began to scream, a long, shrill sound that broke the night. Instinct acting again, Mulder got to his feet and headed towards the little girl. Like before, Krycek got there first.

With only the slightest hesitation, Krycek turned and steadied his aim.

“What? No!” Mulder shouted again but it was too late. Krycek fired. The girl’s arms flew up in a grotesque parody of joy, her little body spinning and hitting the pavement with a sick thud. A moment of frozen horror and then Mulder lunged, landing on Krycek’s back. The force of his attack sent them forward and down to roll on the ground. Mindless, intent on doing as much damage as possible he raised his arm. He swung, hitting Krycek’s shoulder and not his face. He raised his arm again, only then realizing that someone was pulling him back, someone was shouting a repeated, “_Mulder!” _in his ear.

It was Scully. She shouted again, “Mulder! Stop!”

Mulder let himself be dragged back, let himself be hauled to his feet. He turned—it wasn’t Scully, it was the woman, Garcia. Scully was off to the side, her eyes narrowed with shock and anger. Mulder snarled and jerked free; Garcia backed up, her hands raised.

Panting, still furious, Mulder turned. Krycek had gotten to his feet and was bending over to pick up his weapon.

“Mulder,” Scully urged. “Look at her.”

“Scully—”

She jabbed her finger at the corpse. “Look _at _her!”

Ignoring Krycek and the others fanned out behind, Mulder went over and crouched by the girl. He didn’t have to turn her over—her face was angled towards him and her bare arm was stretched out. In the sickly wash of the bright yellow lights he could see she was infected. Patches of her skin were sloughing off and the rest was mottled red. Her glassy eyes were still wide with fear. He wanted to throw up.

Scully came over and knelt by Mulder’s side. “She couldn’t have been saved. It was too late.”

Mulder nodded.

“It’s the only thing we can do, put them out of their misery. At least for now.”

“Are you going to bury them?” Mulder asked, he throat as dry as stone.

“We don’t have time, but we also can’t leave them out to infect anyone else.”

Mulder looked up. “You’re going to burn them?”

Scully nodded.

“Where?”

She examined the area and then nodded to the dirt field on the other side of the road. “There. It’s some distance from vegetation and the gas pumps.”

Mulder turned around. Krycek and a few of the others were at the pumps, getting a big duffle bag out of the back the SUV. One of the men, short and stocky, got out a plastic gas container. “Hey, Scully?”

“Yes?”

Mulder pushed to his feet. He’d scrapped his wrist when he’d attacked Krycek. “I’ve got a booboo,” he said, showing Scully the minor wound. “Feel like playing doctor?” It was a ploy, a stratagem designed to get Scully away from what was to come. She’d seen her share of death and horror, and quantity counted. Especially when it came to little girls.

If she guessed what he was up to, she didn’t call him on it. She just said, “There’s a first-aid kit in the car.”

Mulder led the way, picking up the groceries he’d dropped. As they were passing the group at the SUV, Krycek gave Mulder a strange glance, then nodded shortly.

They got in the front seats, Mulder choosing the driver’s side. Scully busied herself with the kit, neatly disinfecting Mulder’s skin. She was just as neatly bandaging it when she said, “I don’t know for sure, but I assume open wounds are more susceptible to the virus so keep this covered for a while, okay?”

“Okay.” And then, “What did you do with the other bodies?”

“What other bodies?”

“The guys that invaded my home—those bodies.”

“Oh.” She got out some gauze and started wrapping his wrist. “We have a van to carry the infected. They took the two bodies to a nearby crematorium and told the staff that they were victims of the measles.” She glanced up. “When we find a town that’s been affected, we contract with local facilities to handle the overflow.”

Overflow. Mulder closed his eyes briefly. “Jesus.” A cottage industry in the making.

Scully nodded. “It’s horrible but it has to be done. We can’t take a chance on burying them. It’s not a perfect solution. I’m constantly worried that someone might touch the bodies. We’ve expressed the need for extreme caution, but…” She wrapped another loop of gauze around his wrist. “Mulder?”

“Hm?” he said, wondering if it was too late to become a mortician.

“I know I shouldn’t be the one to tell you this, but…” She hesitated, then craned her head to look out the window. Whatever she saw satisfied her because she continued in a low voice, “It’s about Alex. When he suggested we enlist you, I calculated how long it would take for you two to work out your differences, but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen so—”

“He killed my father, Scully. And it’s been, what, five hours since I found out he’s still alive?”

“I know.”

Her calm acceptance was like a goad and he blurted out, “He killed your sister. He killed my _father._”

Scully frowned. “Bill Mulder wasn’t your father—you told me yourself.”

“I know what I told you, Scully.” Mulder’s words were too bitter and he counted to three before adding, “And your sister?”

“Luis Cardinale murdered Missy. He admitted as much.”

“Cardinale was just trying to cut a deal. It was probably Krycek.”

Scully finished wrapping his wrist; she tucked the end of the gauze under a fold. “As far as I’m concerned, Missy’s case is closed but believe me, it took me years to accept it.” She patted his wrist, then pulled off her gloves, one by one. “Mulder, there’s something you should know about Alex. I’m aware it won’t make a difference because even though I made the leap, I now understand that you’ll never forgive him.”

“It’s not a matter of leaping or not, Scully. It’s not a matter of time.”

She nodded. “I know. I understand.”

“Scully—”

She finally looked over at him. “He had a child, Mulder. Alex Krycek had a little girl and she died.”

The rain had picked up and the drops struck the roof of the SUV, a dull, rhythmic thrum that seemed to mimic the beat of Mulder’s pulse. “I— What are you talking about?”

“She died eighteen months ago of a rare type of leukemia. She was nine.”

He couldn’t seem to make the words make sense and he said again, “What are you talking about?” because what he really wanted to say was, _‘But he’s gay.’_

She raised an eyebrow. “You and I moved on, Mulder. Or rather, we tried. You don’t think everyone else did, too?” Scully turned sideways and curled up on the seat. “It seems so long ago, doesn’t it?” she mused. “Those old men who tried to rule the world.”

“They’re probably still trying.”

“Yes but compared with global viruses, identify theft, school shootings—all their machinations seem so…” She shrugged. “As foolish as it is, it seems so sad. The dreams of fools.”

_The dreams of fools, _Mulder repeated silently because in a way, he’d been one of those fools. He probably still was and he was suddenly burning up in the car that wasn’t even warm. He opened the door to let the cool air wash over his face and body. “What was her name?”

“Krycek’s little girl?” Scully asked. “I don’t know. When I wanted to know more, he got angry and left the restaurant; he didn’t return my calls for a week. All I know is that she was diagnosed when she was two.”

For some reason the fact that Scully and Krycek had been eating together when Krycek had told her made everything worse and Mulder wanted to snarl. This new information—unexpected to the point of shocking—had the possibility of changing things and he so very didn’t want things to change. “Is he still married?”

“From what I understand his daughter was a happy accident with his then-girlfriend. They broke up after the girl died.”

Mulder rubbed his wrist, unable to stop the litany of: _‘It’s not sad, it’s not sad…’_

“We’re done,” came a voice from the dark.

Mulder jerked, hitting his wrist on the steering wheel. Krycek was standing there, holding a gas can, the rain shining silver in his hair.

“How is everyone?” Scully asked as she leaned around Mulder.

“It was hard but they’re okay,” Krycek answered, shooting Mulder a quick look as if to ask, _‘How’s Scully?’_

Mulder straightened in the seat. “I’m wide awake,” he said, adjusting the mirror. “Why don’t I drive for a while.” He didn’t have to adjust the seat—they were about the same height.

Krycek’s eyes narrowed but only replied, “I need to shut the station down.”

_It’s not sad and nothing’s changed, _Mulder assured himself as Krycek left. He still hated Krycek, he still had reasons and motivations and nothing was going to change that. Ever.

“Are you okay?” Scully said softly.

_Sure, Scully, it’s just one more nail in this particular coffin but who’s counting? _“I’m not the one experiencing the after effects of shooting a child, Scully,” he said, making a show of putting on his seat belt.

She gave him a piercing look and then opened the SUV’s door. “I’m going to stretch out in the back. Try not to kill each other.”

***

When Krycek returned, he made for the back seat, saw Scully and paused. Shrugging his shoulder as if saying, _‘Oh, well,’ _he slid in next to Mulder. “Garcia is taking the lead. If something happens, follow the GPS.”

“Don’t trust me enough to get us to Atlanta?”

“Don’t start, Mulder.”

Mulder smiled and turned the engine over. Up ahead, Garcia flashed her lights and pulled out of parking lot.

Krycek fastened his seat belt. “Where’s the water?”

“It’s in the back. Scully, can you—”

There was a rustle and then Scully leaned forward to give the pretzels, chips, and water to Krycek.

Krycek set the bags on the floor and then tucked two bottles of water in the armrest. He raised the pretzels.

Mulder shook his head. Krycek opened the bag and sat back.

Mulder tapped the GPS, scrolling through the menu until he found the route. A little over nine hours. Nine hours of silence and pretense. ‘_Try not to kill each other,’_ Scully had said but murder was usually was the result of anger or fear and he suddenly felt neither. Just a flat nothing, smothered by the weight of the heavy soundlessness.

Krycek shifted as if Mulder had spoken out loud.

On the highway now, Mulder wondered if he _had _spoken out loud. Several times over the last year as he’d re-adjusted to being alone, he’d caught himself verbalizing his inner thoughts. One time had been at the grocery store; he’d said something about the quantity of toilet paper brands, startling the woman next to him. She’d flinched and moved away. It had been funny then, now not so much, and he thought he might be going crazy.

It wasn’t a new thought. Crazy had been part and parcel of his life for so long. Living with Scully, being part of something so normal as couple-ness, had dulled his crazy edge. Being single again seemed to bring it all back, a kind of full circle psychosis.

Krycek reached sideways to get a bottle of water and his sleeve rode up, revealing the soft plastic of his false hand and wrist.

Feeling as if he’d just caught a glimpse of something intensely intimate, Mulder cleared his throat.

The last time he’d worked with Krycek, the arm had been obviously false. This one was more realistic, with variations in texture and color. It also seemed to be more functional and Mulder suddenly recalled Krycek pointing the gun not with one hand but with both.

Probably a good thing. A one-armed assassin was a detriment in any situation. But Krycek wasn’t a wanted man, he wasn’t an assassin, was he? Krycek was a ‘facilitator,’ whatever that meant and no, Mulder hadn’t missed that Scully’s description was careful and circumspect. Krycek was a facilitator that got things done and did saintly things like helping the sick and dying, except…

Except Krycek was a father and fathers generally needed both arms to hold, to comfort. Mulder had only a few chances to hold his own baby and that most basic of acts had changed something inside, something fundamental and excruciatingly permanent. He could feel it even now and he cleared his throat again.

“Are you okay?”

Mulder nodded without speaking, saying silently, _‘I’m glad it wasn’t me in that forest in Russia,’ _and,_ ‘You deserved it.’ _Familiar, rote accusations but for the first time he found himself adding, _‘You deserved it but I was the one that bought the tickets to Russia. I was the one that didn’t want to wait for cover of dark before sneaking up to the camp. I was the one.’_

“Because I’m not tired, either. I can drive.”

Mulder flicked on the windshield wipers even though the rain had stopped. “I’m fine.”

“Okay.”

He glanced sideways. Krycek was still eating the pretzels, neatly and without sound and just like that, Mulder was assaulted by another series of memories.

Back then, when he’d first worked with Krycek, he’d studied his new partner as if he was studying an attractive but deadly mystery. He’d had no idea that Krycek was what he turned out to be, but Mulder’s nature had never brooked easy trust and so he’d examined and classified.

Only a year or two younger, Krycek had the air of a newbie so green it was almost painful. The clothes, the gelled hair—it had all been designed to allay and pacify. But under that shell of shellac and studied professionalism, Mulder had discovered a conundrum.

When Krycek entered a room, he surreptitiously surveyed the layout with a swift glance. The few times Krycek had interviewed a witness, he had visibly assumed a mask of caring and concern. When they would stop for meals, Krycek would eat neatly, would never spill crumbs or make a mess. Krycek was a neat sleeper, too. On the flight to Russia, Krycek had slept most of the way, curled around himself, expressing only the most minor of sounds. When he’d woken up, there was none of the usual stretching and yawning that most people made—he’d opened his eyes and he was awake.

Mulder had, at first, assumed that Krycek’s mannerisms were the product of a plebe wanting to impress. Later, he knew them to be the product of a mole deeply embedded, slick and smooth and treacherous, always looking out for number one. Now, he wondered if any of those summations had been correct, if Krycek’s neatness and habits were just Krycek as he was.

_‘My parents were cold war immigrants.’ _That’s what Krycek had said all those years ago. And if that were true—and there was no reason for Mulder to believe that it _wasn’t _the truth—then that might account for Krycek’s chameleon-like qualities, his ability to adapt to any situation. With their normal need to fit in, outsiders tended to be hypersensitive to others; they assessed and then conformed to group dynamics.

Why did that suddenly seem so sad, that Krycek might have spent his formative years trying to be like everyone else? It was common human behavior and it was probably a false diagnosis because Mulder knew he didn’t have all the facts. But in order to achieve the latter, he’d have to get to know this new Krycek and he really, _really,_ didn’t want—

“So,” he said, mostly to break the chain of his own careening thoughts, “eleven years.”

Krycek hadn’t started at Mulder’s abrupt attempt at conversation; he just nodded and said, “Next month it will be twelve.”

“And all you do is coordinate projects?”

“Yes,” Krycek said with no hint of sarcasm, “that’s all I do. Actually,” he turned slightly, “I spend most of my time behind a desk. This is the first time I’ve been out of the office for more than a few weeks running in years.”

Mulder shot Krycek a quick, disbelieving glance. “And you like that, being a pencil pusher?”

“I rarely use pencils.” Krycek made a small gesture. “But, yeah, it pays the bills.”

“No retirement, huh.”

It wasn’t a question but Krycek answered anyway, “No 401k, no pension. My former employers paid well but never offered benefits.”

“You should have held out for a better deal.”

Krycek turned his head. “Retirement was for old men. I never thought I’d live past forty.”

Mulder nodded because, yeah, he’d had those same thoughts. “The shallowness of youth.”

Krycek made a soft sound. “So you’re admitting you didn’t know what you were doing all that time?”

“I’ve always admitted I didn’t know what I was doing. That’s the difference between us.”

Krycek thought about that, then nodded. “You’re right. I was so sure I knew it all, where I was going. I was an idiot.”

Mulder propped his elbow on the door. “So tell me, how did you survive the consortium’s apocalypse?” All those burned bodies, young and old—it had been a nightmare.

Krycek turned again, just a slight shift of his shoulders. “Because I was trying to find a way to bring them down. I thought you knew that.”

“You’ve changed sides so many times my head was perpetually spinning. How was I to ever guess your motivations?”

Another heavy pause while Krycek took that in. “If I tell you there were times _I _didn’t know what side I was on, will you slug me again?”

_Yes, _was Mulder’s immediate response. And then, “No,” because he was having trouble regaining the higher ground of moral indignation and righteous fury. _Scully, why did you tell me about Krycek’s little girl?_

“Because it’s something you already know, that I fucked up over and over again?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s the thing about you,” Krycek murmured as he unscrewed the cap of the water bottle. “You were the only one that stayed true to your cause.” He took a sip and then said, “Well, you and Dana.”

And there it was, his old friend anger. “Hey, Krycek, can you do me a big favor?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you stop calling her ‘_Dana_’?”

“Sure, Mulder,” Krycek said after a long pause. “I can do that.”

Krycek’s tone was colored with hidden humor and Mulder squeezed the steering wheel, a brief spasm of irritation. It wasn’t crazy, not wanting to be reminded that Scully and Krycek had been seeing each other for at least a year, right? It was normal to be frustrated and when he spoke next, he didn’t bother playing nice, “So this place we’re going to, the CDC…” He tapped the LED screen that showed their route and an image of the destination. “It’s ten miles north of Atlanta.” His hands tightened again. “Who are you really working for?”

“I work for the CDC,” Krycek said, and then, “I never said I work _in _Atlanta. My office is in a satellite building, away from the public.”

Damn it.

“And that’s the other thing about you, your endless paranoia.”

Mulder smiled, a bend of his mouth that held no humor, no gentleness. “You seriously aren’t going to try that on me, are you? My endless paranoia is the only thing that’s kept me alive all those years.”

“Not the only thing,” Krycek said.

“Which brings me back to this: why am I here and don’t tell me it’s because I know how to read a fucking _map_.” His voice had risen and he shot a quick glance in the rearview. Scully was in the corner of the seat, her eyes closed. “There are a thousand good field agents out there that are better suited for something as crucial as this,” he added. “Why me?”

Krycek was quiet for a moment and then he said, low and tight, “You want to know why? Okay.” He turned his head. “It’s because you’re not and have never been a good agent. You make stupid moves based on kneejerk assumptions and you _still _manage to make it through alive, because when all is said and done, your kneejerk assumptions turn out to be the right solutions. Whatever weird combination of intelligence and instinct you’ve got going for you, it works. None of the men and women in those other cars can do what you do. They’re machines and they think like machines. Their training always gets in the way of their reactions. Since February, I’ve lost three members of my staff because they followed standard procedures and that’s three too many. So, yeah, it’s not because you’re a good agent, it’s because you’re a bril—” Krycek drew a deep breath and then stopped talking as if stunned he’d said so much.

_‘It’s because you’re a brilliant agent,’ _Mulder finished silently, wishing he’d never asked. In an effort to deflect, he said, “You don’t mean that literally, do you?” At Krycek’s look of mute inquiry, Mulder added, “About them being machines.”

Krycek sighed. “No, I didn’t mean that literally. As far as I know the alien super soldiers are gone.”

Mulder nodded. Something had just happened, something weird and undefined and he felt hollow and off. He wanted desperately to ask Krycek about his daughter. He wanted to ask about the girlfriend and if it had meant anything. He wanted to know that, if Krycek thought he was so brilliant, why had he lied and fought and betrayed him, over and over again? He wanted to ask all those things but what came out was: “I had a dream about you.”

“What?”

Shit, that wasn’t what he’d meant to say. It wasn’t even the right words and he back peddled weakly, “I mean, not a dream. A vision. Just a vision.” Like that made it better.

“A vision.”

He could dissimilate and lie but he’d said too much already. Krycek would never let it go. Worse yet, Krycek would ask Scully and since Mulder had never _told _Scully… With an eye on Scully’s sleeping face, Mulder said softly, “All right. It was about ten years ago. I was following a lead and ended up being a guest of the military.”

“Yeah. I heard about that.”

Mulder chanced a quick glance. “You did?”

“I was in the Middle East, but I learned about it through the grapevine.”

“And which grapevine was that?”

Krycek took a sip of water, then said blandly, “I still had connections to the consortium. They sent out word that an FBI agent had infiltrated Mount Weather. It didn’t take much effort to find out it was you.”

“What else did they say?”

“That you were imprisoned and tortured over the death of the supposed Master Sergeant Rohrer. My connections were happy about it. I think they were hoping you would be incarcerated permanently.”

“‘Imprisoned and tortured,’” Mulder repeated softly. It had been so much more than that and he felt it once again, the slip-slide as reality melded and folded, ephemeral as snow in July.

“Yeah, it’s never just that,” Krycek agreed as if Mulder had spoken out loud. “And if you were hallucinating, it was a lot worse than I was told.” He put the cap back on the water. “What happened? In the vision, I mean.”

“Nothing much. You tried to help me get away. You stopped me from going crazy.” He added, putting as much humor in as possible, “I saw another ‘friend’ from the past, too. It wasn’t just you.”

Krycek didn’t say anything for the longest time and then he asked, “How did I stop you from going crazy?”

“You appeared in my cell. You talked to me. You told me that you were going help me. And you did. I was pretty lost by then.”

Krycek had been holding the bottle of water and with a sudden squeeze, the plastic crinkled and a spurt of water shot out of the top, “Damn it,” he swore, swiping at the damp on his trousers. “Damn it,” he said again, this time even softer, even sadder.

“C’mon,” Mulder said with another attempt and humor. “Don’t tell me you’re surprised. You always thought I was mostly crazy to begin with.”

“No, I didn’t. I thought you were shortsighted and pigheaded and so fucking self-righteous it made me nuts, but I never thought you were crazy.” Krycek put the water bottle back in the cup holder. And then he looked over at Mulder. “Not really.”

Mulder couldn’t help himself—he let himself meet Krycek’s gaze. It was hard, not shying away, but he managed. The contact lasted only a few seconds and that was okay. He was driving, it was too dark to see much, and those few seconds were surprisingly painful. It had been a long, long time since he’d let himself be so vulnerable in front of Alex Krycek.

Krycek seemed to feel the same because he shifted to the right, widening the gap between them. “No offense, but I wish I’d been there to see it. Knowing you, they probably had to invent a new kind of torture.”

“Because I’m fucking stubborn?”

“It was fucking self-righteous and no, it’s because you know who you are. It’s hard to find a way into that. I should know.”

Not sure if he was flattered or insulted but thinking it was the former, Mulder started to answer when Krycek’s two-way buzzed.

Krycek unhitched the two-way and answered, “Krycek.”

Though Mulder tried, he couldn’t hear the other side of the short conversation, just Krycek’s monotone _‘yeses’ _and _‘noes’,’ _and finally, his quiet, “All right. I’ll tell them.”

Krycek hung up, then turned to look over his shoulder. “Scully?”

Scully sat up. “I’m awake.”

Hoping Scully hadn’t been playing possum the whole time, Mulder asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Garcia called the office to check in. No one answered.”

“I suppose it would be foolish of me to point out it’s four in the morning.”

“That particular building is staffed night and day and they have twenty-four hour security.”

“You said the cell towers are down.”

“Garcia used her sat phone.” Krycek got another phone from one of his many pockets. This one was small and black with a thick antenna. He pushed a button and held it to his ear, adding a murmured, “The line was working a few hours ago.”

Mulder and Scully waited while Krycek listened.

“Well?” Mulder said, knowing what the answer had be.

Krycek didn’t reply. He frowned and dialed again. This time he hung up after a few seconds. “No response. Something_ has _happened.”

Scully removed her seat belt and sat forward. “Maybe one of the infected broke in?”

Mulder shook his head. “Why?” He felt more than saw Krycek and Scully turn to him. “I mean, why would they bother? Unless it’s another government trying to steal secrets, it’s not like the walking dead rejects have any reason to attack, right? They’re not organized and they have no agenda therefore they have no reason to attack. They also have no reason to cause a blackout in your communications. It has to be something else.”

Krycek nodded. “Good point.”

“Good point or not,” Mulder said, “if you’re people aren’t picking up, it’s trouble either way.”

“Which means we need to be prepared,” Scully said as she touched Mulder’s shoulder and then sat back. “Anything could have happened.”

***

Anything _had _happened.

They arrived at the office park a little after dawn.

The trip had been tense, growing more so the closer they got to their destination. An hour out, Krycek suggested he drive the rest of the way. He called Garcia and one by one, the SUVs pulled over. Like something from a Buster Keaton film, all the drivers and passengers switched seats. Without asking, Mulder traded places with Scully, knowing she wouldn’t ask, knowing she needed to be up front. She was the one with the weapons, after all.

When they got within signs of civilization, Garcia slowed down and so did Krycek. They took the rest of the way at a crawl. Krycek and Scully were on alert, peering all around as if expecting an onslaught at any time. Scully had gotten her dart gun out and Krycek was gripping the wheel as if he wanted to strangle it.

Mulder wasn’t sure what they were expecting. The area they were driving through was hilly but it was fairly open. Other then a low, buoyant mist, there were no woods or tall bushes where the infected could lay in wait. If they even would do such a thing because he was sure he’d been right—why _would _they? Still, his companion’s apprehension only increased his own; by the time Krycek murmured, “Here we are,” Mulder was jittery and anxious, tapping a tuneless beat on his own thigh.

There was still nothing much to see—just a typical office park sitting in a shallow depression less than one hundred feet of the road. Each building was exactly like the other and the grounds were recently mowed. A circle of coniferous and deciduous trees divided the surrounding parking lot from the buildings. Another line of trees bordered the road, creating a visual barrier. The parking lot wasn’t full—the spaces nearest the first building were empty though there was a cluster of vehicles down at the very end of property. No security gate, no wires; all in all, the setting gave off a pastoral, nothing-to-see-here vibe. Even the sign at the entrance was modest: _Deer Valley. “_You ever see any deer around here, Krycek?” Mulder murmured.

Krycek snorted, his fingers loosening their death grip. “No, Mulder, I’ve never seen any deer.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s that?” Scully nodded towards the nearest building. There was an SUV parked askew on the other side of the building. “Is that a car?”

“It’s Manny Kennedy’s,” Krycek answered, adding in explanation, “He’s our section chief and if he’s here, then something _is _wrong. He would never ignore a phone call.” He got out the sat phone again and held it up. “Mulder? Kennedy is in my contact list—will you give him a call? Maybe he’s in the can.”

Wanting to say, _‘So now I’m your secretary?’ _Mulder took the phone. He’d found the directory and called. Up ahead, Garcia slowed to a halt. “There’s no answer,” he said as a metallic voice stated, _“The number you’ve reached is not in service. Please hang up and—” He_ hung up and tried again. Same result. “Unless Kennedy has a severe bowel blockage, it looks like something is wrong.” He gave the phone back to Krycek, making sure their fingers had no way of touching.

Krycek pulled to the side of the road. He got out of the car. The other drivers did the same and met on a grassy slope.

“They’re ex-military, aren’t they?” Mulder said absently as he examined the office park. There was something about the buildings…

“I believe so,” Scully said. “Alex hired most of them; they’ve been with him for a while.”

“What is it about those build—” Mulder started to say when it hit him. As far as he could see, the buildings had no doors or windows and the pine tree near the closest building was actually a disguised microwave tower.

“What is it?” Scully answered, peering out the window.

“Just that—”

Krycek came back and leaned in the car. “You two might want to hear this.”

Scully glanced at Mulder; they both got out of the SUV.

Krycek waited until they were all huddled together before speaking. “Thompson called each staff member on last night’s shift and none of them answered so there’s clearly been an incursion or at least an accident. We need to go in. We’ll use the south entrance.”

“Really?” Mulder asked with a wide smile as he glanced at the rock-hard faces of Krycek’s team. The guy next to him was holding a tablet—on the screen was what looked like a camera feed. “That’s it? No one answers the door so you storm the castle?”

“What would you suggest, Mr. Mulder?” Garcia said shortly, giving Krycek a quick glance as if saying, _‘Who does this guy think he is?’_

Long used to this type of response, Mulder said, “Correct me if I’m wrong but those buildings all connect together and the entire structure has only a few access points, right?”

Krycek nodded. “There’s a single corridor that connects all the buildings. And yes, there are two points of entry—the loading dock in the rear and the employee entrance to the south. I know what you’re going—”

“To say,” Mulder interrupted again. “You know I’m going to say that going into a situation where you might be trapped like rats is stupid.” Everyone except Krycek turned to look at the offices. “You know I’m going to say that you should take a few minutes to discuss the situation before you do something so monumentally—”

“Stupid,” Krycek did his own interrupting, impatient and tense. “We have to make sure the vaccine is safe, Mulder. We don’t have a choice.”

“Sure you do,” Mulder said. The team had drawn closer to Krycek, an obvious show of allegiance and protection. Even Scully had distanced herself and he wanted to say sadly, _After all these years, don’t you trust me? _“Trust me,” he said, his smile dying. “You can find a better way.”

Garcia jerked her thumb to the man holding the laptop. “Thompson hacked into the security system, Mr. Mulder. Most of the cameras are down, but as far as we can see, there is no one in there.”

“And how many people are _supposed _to be in there?” Mulder asked, wondering if Garcia knew that every time she said the words ‘Mr. Mulder,’ she stressed the title. _Yeah, I get it, _he said silently. _I’m not in the Bureau and you probably know that even when I was, I was a pariah. Spooky Mulder will never die. _“Over a hundred, right?”

“This facility employs over one hundred and thirty-two individuals. Out of that number, over seventy-five are on the research staff,” Garcia said. “There should be a least fifty-eight in there right now.”

“And then there are the infected patients,” Scully chimed in quietly.

“So if anything has gone wrong,” Mulder urged, “which seems to be the case, and cutting the number by half just because, we’re looking at the fifteen of us against maybe thirty or forty of them, best case scenario.” He let that sink in. “We can find a better way, one that doesn’t get us all killed or zombiefied.”

His tone was facetious and Garcia’s expression hardened to granite. “I’ll ask again,” she said, “What’s your big idea?”

Mulder glanced at the building and then bit his lip. Two access points, one to the west, one to the south, right?

He turned; Krycek quickly glanced away though Mulder got the distinct impression…

He shook off the thought, that Krycek had been staring at his mouth, and said, “So the problem is we have only two doors and we need a third or even a fourth, right?”

Garcia didn’t answer but Krycek did, “Yeah, a third door would be nice but there isn’t one.”

“Well then,” Mulder said, unable to keep from grinning because this was going to be fun. “Why don’t we make it ourselves?”

***

Predictably, there were objections. Garcia and Thompson thought he was crazy and said so. _‘You’re crazy,’ _were the tandem comments, made one on top of the other. One of the members of Team Krycek whispered something to another and then both smirked and shook their heads. Scully pointed out that as they didn’t know where the people were, any kind of explosion might cause collateral damage.

Only Krycek didn’t respond. He’d moved apart from the others and was staring at the building, his head tipped as he thought about it.

And chalk that up to one more thing that Mulder didn’t want to remember, that for the most part, Alex Krycek had at least considered his ideas. The ideas that everyone did or would dismiss as stupid or nonsensical or downright criminal. Even though their association hadn’t lasted long, that acceptance had been a breath of fresh air. Enough so that Mulder had been foolish to start thinking in terms of, _‘what if?’ _and _‘I wonder?’ _“Krycek?” he said, taking a step closer. “What do you think?”

If it had been well over a decade since he’d been able to stand next to Krycek without wanting to hit him, it had been well over a decade since he’d asked Krycek’s opinion, and Krycek’s eyes widened before he said, “It’s a good idea.” His team grumbled but he ignored them. “We’ll set the charges furthest from the labs and the refrigeration units and bracket the building in case we need a fourth entrance.” He turned to Garcia. “If they’re in a lock-down situation, the doors will be secured and we’d have to blow them anyway.”

Garcia shrugged, the picture of reluctant agreement. “All right. Do you want me to call it in?”

Krycek shook his head. “I will.”

Mulder leaned into Thompson’s space. “If you can, you might want to cut the cameras outside.”

Thompson curled his lip and stepped away from Mulder, but began scrolling through the tablet’s windows.

Mulder smiled in satisfaction, a smile that widened when he saw that Krycek was watching with a raised eyebrow. “I’m assuming you have a demolition expert on your staff,” he said, half joking.

Krycek gave him a wry, almost sweet smile. “You know I do, Mulder.”

Mulder wanted to be outraged at Krycek’s mild reply, but was only relieved. “Anyone got some Kevlar I can borrow? The blacker the sexier.”

Krycek pressed his lips together and Scully said, “I’ll get you set up, Mulder. Come on.”

***

“What was that?” Scully said as she pulled tactical equipment from the big duffle bag in the back of the SUV.

Mulder held the vest up. It was too big but size didn’t matter. At least in this case. “What was what?”

“Back there.” She set a helmet on the pile. “With you and Alex.”

He pulled on the vest and, yeah, too big. “What d’you mean?”

“It almost seemed as if you were—” With a shake of her head, Scully stopped talking.

In the middle of fastening the vest, Mulder paused. “Almost seemed as if I was what, Scully?”

Scully sighed and turned to rest her hip against the frame of the SUV. “Nothing. I’m tired and I’m worried. We haven’t had a chance to start production at the other facilities. If the vaccine is lost, we’re going to have a big problem.”

She was deflecting. Again. But what to do about it? There was no time and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know anyway. With a shrug and a press on the Velcro to make it sure it was secure, he accepted the change of subject. “Where are the refrigeration units? Do you have some sort of map?”

Scully nodded and got out her phone. “I’ve never been here but Alex gave me the schematics a few days ago.” Two swipes and she held the phone up.

Wishing Scully would stop calling Krycek ‘Alex,’ but unable to ask, Mulder bent close. And squinted.

“You forgot your glasses.”

He shrugged. “They’re too weak. I need a new prescription.”

“They’re better than nothing. I have some readers in my backpack.”

He swiped, moving the imaged down. “It’s okay. I can see.”

“I thought you were looking into surgery.”

The buildings were as described—most of the offices were in the front, the labs in the back. “I decided the risks weren’t worth the dubious rewards. Besides, you always said I look sexy in glasses.”

“I always said you look like a schoolteacher in glasses.”

“That’s pretty much the same thing.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to ge—”

“Scully, it’s fine,” Mulder said impatiently. He straightened up. “I can see the screen and that’s all that matters.”

“Everything okay?”

They both turned; Krycek was standing right behind them. He was wearing gloves and a Bluetooth earpiece and carrying a helmet. The sun was on the rise and it highlighted details the night had hidden, mainly that he had crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. It didn’t make him any less attractive.

Of course it is,” Mulder said, mood suddenly sour. “Where are you going to place the charges?”

Krycek tucked the helmet under his arm and made a small gesture. Scully handed him the phone. Holding it so both Mulder and Scully could see, he reduced the image so the entire area fit on the screen. “Here,” he said, pointing to a section about half way down. “We’ll put the first charge near the back of Building B. It’s where the clerical and non-essential offices are. We’ll go in through the storage room.”

“‘Non-essentials,’” Mulder murmured with a smirk. “Bet your co-workers wouldn’t appreciate that designation, Krycek.”

“My office is there, Mulder.”

_Oh, come on. _“And the second charge?”

“I rethought my original assessment,” Krycek continued smoothly as if he hadn’t just scored a point. “Even though it’s close to crucial lab equipment, Building C will provide a better access point to Buildings D, E, and F.” He looked up. “The laboratories are in D and E and the refrigerators are in F.”

“Good,” Scully said with a nod, “if any of us get trapped in the hallway, we’ll have two more escape routes.”

Krycek smiled down at Scully. “Exactly.”

_Don’t react, don’t react… _“I realize I’m a fifth wheel,” Mulder said, “but where do you want me?”

“Why don’t you stick with me, Mulder,” Scully said. “As a consultant, I’ll stay out and watch the perimeter.”

“I’m putting Mendez on the far side,” Krycek said. “You two keep in touch and call if anything happens.” He turned to Mulder. “If you’re having vision problems, I need to know now.”

Mulder rolled his eyes. “I’m fine. I can see everything I want to see.” And maybe it was the result of feeling like a five-year old being chastised by parents that made him add, “And you’re only a year or two younger, you know. How are _your_ eyes?”

Surprisingly, Krycek grinned and pointed to his eyes. “Contacts. You should give them a try.” He turned to go but stopped to look over his shoulder. “And I agree, by the way—the schoolteacher thing _is _a good look on you.”

And then he was gone, leaving Mulder standing there with an open mouth.

“Close your mouth, Mulder,” Scully murmured. “That is definitely _not_ a good look on you.”

***

Krycek’s comment stayed with Mulder as Scully led him to the trees near the road. It replayed in his head while they waited for Krycek to set the charges. _The schoolteacher thing is a good look on you. _What a juvenile thing to say. But…

Was it true? And did it matter if it _was_?

He wanted to ask Scully what she’d made of the comment but she had her most Sphinx-like expression on and he just couldn’t do it. Which was probably a good thing because it wasn’t the time or place. If there ever _was _a time or place for one to ask if—

“Here we go.”

“Huh?” Mulder said, looking up to follow Scully’s gesture. Krycek’s men were scurrying back, finding cover where they could. “Oh.”

Scully glanced at him but she didn’t have time to respond because a muffled roar shook the air and the ground trembled. Dust and debris exploded from the both sides of the building and sent plumes of smoke outward. When sight and sound cleared, Krycek’s teams were already running towards the buildings.

“So we’re just gonna wait out here?” Mulder asked, examining the gaping hole through his borrowed binoculars.

“I suppose you want to follow them,” Scully answered.

“It’s a CDC research facility, Scully. How many opportunities will I have?”

“You are not going in, Mulder. I promised Alex that I would—”

The ground shivered once more, this time a violent roll.

Scully grabbed his arm. “What was tha—?”

There was a pause as if the world took a deep breath and then the nearest building blew apart. The concussive pressure knocked Mulder back into a tree, sending the binoculars flying.

“Holy shit,” he muttered as soon as he could, as soon as he had caught his breath and balance. He was covered in leaves from the trees and his ears were ringing. Scully had fallen on the other side of the tree. She was also covered in leaves. “Holy shit.” He got to his feet and helped Scully up. “That came from inside.”

Scully brushed the leaves out of her hair. “Could it be the gas?”

“No,” Mulder answered. He scrambled down the hill.

“Mulder!” Scully called out. “I prom—”

Mulder slid to a stop and turned. “That came from _inside, _Scully, which means someone or something is trying to get out. We need to stop them!” Without waiting, he continued on, picking up speed when he reached asphalt.

The explosion had sent a fan of smoke and debris in a wide arc across the parking lot. When he got to the rubble, Mulder’s training kicked in; he slowed down and approached the smoke-filled area in a low sidle, not wanting to disturb the evidence. Bricks and metal struts and chunks of cement and—

He hurried forward. It was a Caucasian man, or what was left of him. Lying face down, the man was in uniform; a two-way still clutched in his hand. Mulder rolled him over. _Reginald Evans, Security, _said the man’s nametag.

“Oh, my God,” Scully breathed as she knelt next to Mulder. “Did you touch his skin?”

Mulder glanced at Scully and then at Evans and then at his own bare hands. “He wasn’t infected. Look at his wounds.” Part of the man’s face was missing but that wasn’t what killed him. Across Evans’s chest was an irregular pattern of five bullets. There was one in his arm, too. “This was intentional. I doubt a zombie is that accurate.”

“We don’t know that, Mulder.” She got a slim package out of one of her many pockets and gave it to him with a, “Just in case.”

It was a package of wet wipes—trust Scully to be prepared.

“We have very little data on their capabilities,” Scully added as she replaced her tactical gloves for the latex she’d mysteriously extracted from some other pocket. “For all we know, the infection only increases certain individual’s natural abilities.”

Mulder cleaned his hands and then stuffed the balled-up wipe in his jean’s pocket. “You’re not saying that if a marksman got infected, he’d be a _better _marksman, are you? Talk about—”

Scully unbuttoned Evans’s shirt. “It’s something we’re loo—” Scully’s two-way crackled to life, cutting her off midstream.

“Dana?” came Krycek’s digital voice.

Scully tipped her head. Mulder unhooked her two-way and pushed the button. “It’s Mulder.”

“Why are you answering? Is Dana okay?”

“She’s examining a body. Didn’t you hear the explosion?”

A split second and then Krycek said, “We thought it was the other charge going off late. What happened?”

“The front of your building is gone.”

Another pause. “A or B?”

Mulder touched Scully’s shoulder, telling her to keep going, that he would handle Krycek’s questions. He got to his feet. “A.” He scanned the area. The smoke was lifting. “It took out the whole north side. Do you know a Reginald Evans?” There were two more bodies nearer the ragged maw of the building. Mulder leaned down and touched Scully’s shoulder again then jerked his thumb towards the front of the building. She nodded back.

“Reggie? He’s the head of security. Is he dead?”

Mulder began making his way towards the bodies. “Yeah, but he was killed by bullets, not infection.”

“Christ,” Krycek murmured, and then, “He was a good man.”

Even through the static, Mulder could hear Krycek’s minimal grief; the ridiculous urge to comfort choked his throat. Instead, he said, “I’m going in through the front.”

“I’d rather you stay clear and make sure none of the infected get out.”

Mulder stopped in his tracks. “Are you asking me?”

“Yes.”

He was standing amid the detritus of a situation gone horrible wrong. There was a dead man not-literally at his feet and two more not far away. There were also, most likely, many more dead people inside waiting to be discovered. Why, then, did he feel as if the pale Georgia sun had grown hotter and brighter? “All right,” he said after a moment. “I’ll make sure no one gets out. Do you want me to call 911?”

“No. My service is working again so I called the head office. They’ll send help. ”

“And the neighbors?”

“We’re fifty miles from the nearest farm. Hopefully they’ll think it’s a freak morning thunderstorm.”

“A thunderstorm in April?”

“Stranger things have happened, Mulder.”

_You got that right. _“How’s it going in there?”

“It’s a mess but we haven’t found anyone yet.”

“That’s not good.”

“No, it’s not.” There was a clang and a thud and when Krycek spoke next, his tone was distant, distracted, “I’m sending Kim Park out to assist you. Once we suss out the situation in here, we’ll regroup.”

“All right.”

“Don’t take any chances. If someone comes out and they’re sweating or acting odd, you need to take care of it.”

“Your office building just exploded. I think most of your staff is going to be a little nervous and sweating and acting odd.”

“You know what I mean. And they’re not my staff.”

“Yeah. All right.”

“Tell Scully I’ll need her in here but to wait for my call.”

“Got it.”

There was another thud, this one louder. “Are you okay?”

_‘I should be asking you that—what are you doing?’ _because he heard another loud thump through the two-way’s speaker. “I’m fine.”

Krycek hesitated, then said on a breath of a laugh, “I suppose if anyone can handle this, it’s you. You and your monsters.”

“They’re not monsters.”

“No, they’re not.”

There was another moment, one that slipped and slinked into an awkward, heavy pause. Mulder chewed his lip as he debated slipping with it or crawling back to the more familiar surface of sarcasm and distance and denial. Like it had to, familiarity won and he muttered, “I’m going to help Scully. Talk to you later,” and then hung up.

But he didn’t go help Scully. She was examining the other bodies and he set the two-way down next to her with a muttered, ‘Thanks,’ and then stomped back to the end of the parking lot to get a better point-of-view of the open building. He was angry, he realized, filled with a grey, formless irritation that had no real focus other than, _‘We’re not friends,’_ and _‘You’re not forgiven.’ _He knew what would help—a target that he could bury his poison darts into but even that was gone. _‘Alex Krycek had a little girl and she died.’_

It was stupid, of course, being weirdly jealous that Krycek had a family. Scully had said it herself—everyone had moved on. Everyone but him.

He was still watching, still worrying, when Scully joined him.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

“Fine.”

“What did Alex say?”

“Just that they hadn’t come across anyone and that he’ll call you when he needs you and that I’m supposed to make sure none of the infected get out.” He wanted to add a pithy, _‘And can you please stop calling him ‘Alex?’ _but, again, caught himself just in time.

“Anything else?”

“No.” He sighed and lowered his shoulders, saying again, “No.”

Scully pulled off her gloves. “The other men died from gunshot wounds, too.”

Mulder rubbed his forehead, almost grateful for the reminder that his problems were nothing in comparison to what was going on. And how fucked up was that, given what had just happened? _Mulder you’re a selfish bastard._ “How many do you think are going to make it out of there alive?”

Scully shook her head. “I have no idea.”

“It’s so quiet,” he said, cocking his head to listen harder. Other than the low trill of a nearby bird, there were no sounds—no gunfire, no shouts, no screams. “What was the girlfriend’s name?” he asked before he could think not to. Too late to do anything but back peddle, he tried to deflect with a smile. “Not that it’s any of my business, of course.”

“No,” Scully said slowly, examining him as if he’d just sprouted horns, “I don’t think he’ll mind you knowing—everyone did. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you in the first place.” She smoothed her hair back. “It was Marnie Garcia.”

It took him a moment. “You mean _Garcia _Garcia? The woman…” He nodded to the building as if that said everything.

Scully nodded. “The one in the same. Apparently they dated for a few years before she got pregnant.”

“Oh.”

“Mulder…” Scully squared her shoulders and turned to face him. “I know it’s none of my—_”_

Again, Scully was interrupted, this time by a shout. It was one of Krycek’s men, waving them in from the mouth of the building. Behind him, walking like the living dead themselves, was a ragged line of survivors.

“Oh my God,” Scully breathed, adding absently, “Can you get my kit out of the car? We’ll set up a triage unit in the parking lot.” Without waiting for a response, she began running towards the wounded.

Mulder hurried towards the SUVs and rifled through them. He got every emergency kit he could find, all the while carefully not thinking of the question Scully had been about to ask.

***

The next few hours were a continuation of chaos. Scully and Park took charge of the situation and within fifteen minutes a surprisingly sophisticated triage was in place. Three emergency vehicles and a black SWAT van arrived soon after.

Itching to get inside the buildings, Mulder helped when and where he could but he wasn’t needed so eventually, he began to interview the employees. They were dazed and confused; none asked for his credentials and most had no clue what had happened. One minute it had been business as usual, the next, they were running for their lives.

“And this Mr. Quinn—what did he do next?” He was sitting on the curb next to a woman by the name of Sandra Hudson. Sandra was fifty-something, dark-haired and dark-eyed with a tattoo of an arrow on the back of her hand. Her face and arms were grimy with soot. When they’d first sat down, she was trembling. He’d offered her a bottle of water; she’d pushed it away and then grabbed it to hold against her chest. She was clearly on the edge of hysteria.

“I don’t remember.” Sandra wiped her cheek with the corner of her blanket. “As soon as he got us into the warehouse, he locked the doors. He told us not to bother calling for help because he’d set up some kind of dampening field and our phones wouldn’t work.”

“Did any of you try?”

“We all did,” she said. “He was right; we couldn’t get a signal, but most of us had been having trouble with our phones anyway.” She smiled at Mulder. “You know, because of the meteor?”

Mulder nodded. The bomber wouldn’t want to count on the spotty cell service; of course he’d planned on jamming the employee’s cell signals. Frohike

Maybe the device was still inside. Maybe they’d be able to trace the purchase. If only Frohike, Byers, and Langly were still around. “You were in HR, right? Did you interview him yourself?” He glanced at Sandra’s water bottle. “You should have some of that.”

Once more, Sandra shook her head and then said, “The initial interviews are done at the home office. I just do the follow-ups and climatize the new employees when they’re hired.” She smiled again. “That’s what we call it, climatize.”

Mulder bent his lips. “And when did you hire Quinn?”

“Mr. Quinn started five, no six days ago.” She frowned. “He was a nice man.”

“I’m sure he was.” A nice man bent on stealing the vaccine and all the accompanying research. “So, he locked you in—how long was it before you heard the first explosion.”

“I don’t know; maybe an hour? We thought…” She blinked away sudden tears. “Part of the ceiling fell on us. We thought we were going to be buried alive. When Alex came through the door—” She scrubbed her cheeks with the blanket again. “I need to go.”

The blanket had slipped and absently, Mulder adjusted it. _‘When Alex came through the door…’ _Krycek must have seemed like a superhero, come to save them all. “Do you have a way home?”

“My car is in the back lot.” Sandra got to her feet. Mulder helped her.

“I don’t think you should drive.”

She smiled. Her tears had washed away the grime from the corners of her eyes. “I’ll be okay. I’ll wait until I get home before I pass out.”

“Okay. Your personal items should be over there.” He nodded to the tables set up by one of Krycek’s men.

She smiled again and then shrugged off the blanket. “Thank you, Mr—” She frowned. “I never got your name.”

“It’s Mulder. I’m with the FBI.” An easy lie. Sandra was in that post-traumatic fugue—she’d never remember the conversation. Still, he couldn’t help a quick glance Scully’s way.

“The FBI—did you work with Alex?”

And that was a surprise. A heart-jerking surprise because it meant that she and Krycek were close enough that she knew Krycek’s history, that he hadn’t lied about it. “It was a long time ago.”

“In a galaxy far, far away.”

“Yeah,” Mulder said slowly. “I really don’t think you should dri—”

“Mulder?”

He turned. Krycek was making his way through debris and around people. He was gray with dust and was carrying an evidence bag.

“Sandra,” Krycek said as soon as he was within range. “How are you doing?”

Sandra swayed. “I was just telling your friend how you saved the day.”

Krycek shot a quick look Mulder’s way. “I just opened the door, Sandra.”

Sandra gripped Krycek’s arm. “I know what I know.”

Over Sandra’s head, Mulder silently told Krycek that she was about to collapse. Krycek nodded and then said gently, “Hey, I know your car is back there but I’ve called in the bus—it will take you home.”

“I can’t. I need to finish up the interviews.”

“No,” Krycek said, “you’re going home to get some rest. Someone will—” He looked over his shoulder and called out, “Jack!”

A young man over by the tents looked over his shoulder. He waved and then trotted over. “Yes, sir?”

“Can you escort Sandra to the buses?”

“Sure thing.” Jack-whoever-he-was cocked his elbow. “C’mon, Miss Hudson, let’s get you home.”

Sandra made no objections; she just gave Mulder the crumpled water bottle and took Jack’s arm, then let herself be escorted away.

“They’re all like that,” Krycek murmured.

“Terrorism, domestic or otherwise, messes with the brain,” Mulder answered. “Are you sure she’s going to be all right? What if she talks to the press?”

“The employees live in off-campus housing—I’ve already let the property managers know what happened. They’ll make sure no one gets in.”

_Or out. _“What about the vaccine?”

Krycek sighed. “That’s the only good news. Quinn, whoever he really was, never got close to the labs. Evans and his men took care of that.” He rubbed his chin with the back of his glove. “My best guess is that Evans intercepted Quinn when he went back to the security office to turn off the alarms. Quinn must have accidentally set off some sort of incendiary device and the whole building blew.”

“Or it was a deliberate way of making sure _no _one got the vaccine.”

Krycek shrugged. “That crossed my mind. Quinn’s cover was thorough enough to fool us, meaning _he_ was no fool.”

“Is he over there?” Mulder nodded to the bodies, to the debris field where Hazmat-suited men and women were combing through the rubble.

“No,” Krycek said. “He’s inside. Well, what’s left of him is inside. The men over there are Andy Porter and Frank Simpson. Quinn shot them, too.” Like Sandra Hudson, he swayed, just a slight back and forth that was all the more shocking because his voice was per usual: unruffled and even. And because it was Alex Krycek, murder and liar and traitor and betrayer and—

Before he could stop himself, Mulder touched Krycek’s arm. “Everything’s under control. You should sit down for a while.”

He expected Krycek to scoff or roll his eyes but he just nodded. “Okay. For a minute.”

They went over to the curb and sat down, Krycek dropping more than sitting.

Mulder unscrewed the bottle of water; it was warm but better than nothing. “Here.”

With a slanted glance, Krycek took it. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

_Because everyone here likes you and it’s weird and unsettling and I don’t know if they’re chumps or if it was me all along. Because maybe Scully was right. Because, mostly, I can. _“Don’t worry,” Mulder assured Krycek. “As soon as this is over, I’ll go back to hating you.”

Krycek grinned and downed the water in one go. “Thanks,” he said, wiping his mouth. “I didn’t realize I was so thirsty.”

“You were in there for hours.” At Krycek’s raised eyebrow, Mulder pointed out, “It’s almost one.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah.” They were both silent for a moment. This time the quiet was comfortable and easy and that was completely wrong so Mulder fumbled for something to say, lighting on: “The vaccine is really okay?”

“Yeah, it’s untouched, as is the research.”

“Good.” And then, “What did you find out about Quinn?”

“Nothing, so far. They’re reviewing his files at the home office but I know what they’ll find.”

_He was a nice man. _“And innocuous life that matches an innocuous personality.”

Krycek smiled sourly as he shook his head. “He was vetted. I doubt his files will show much more. A team is on the way to his home to retrieve anything they can, but…” He shrugged again as if that said it all.

Their own history. It was filled with the same lies and subterfuge but for once Mulder didn’t want to scratch that itch; he nodded to the evidence bag near Krycek’s dusty black boots. “What’s that?”

Krycek nudged it very gently. “A signal scrambler.”

“It’s what he used to block their cell phones.”

“Most likely.”

Mulder picked up the bag. He’d seen his share of similar technology but that didn’t mean he knew what to do with it. “It’s too bad.”

“What’s too bad?”

“This…” Mulder raised the bag. “I had some friends that could help track the seller, maybe even give you some leads on Quinn.” He turned the bag over, squinting, unable to read the tiny print on the underside of the device. “But they’re dead now, so you’ll have to rely on your own people.”

Krycek turned the water bottle over and over. “About that…”

Still focused on the scrambler, it took Mulder a moment to realize what Krycek wasn’t saying. He felt a wash of cold and then heat. He looked up. “No,” he said flatly and then louder, angrier, “No!”

“It wasn’t my call, Mulder,” Krycek said. “They said it was for the best.”

Afraid of what he’d do to the device, he set it at Krycek’s feet and started to get up.

Krycek grabbed his arm. “They were worried about you,” he said, his grip tightening. “You were out and they wanted you to stay out.”

Mulder tried to pull free. When he couldn’t, he twisted around and hissed in a low whisper, “I thought they were _dead_. I mourned for them!” The sun that had been comforting warm was suddenly stiflingly hot.

“I know.”

“All this time…” He shook his head and then shook it again, unable to stop because the world had started tipping and it wouldn’t stop. “You and now them. Jesus _Christ.”_

“I know.”

“Stop saying that!” Mulder jerked again. This time Krycek let him go. “You don’t know! You don’t know what I—” His voice had risen and he glanced up. Scully, with that sixth sense of hers, had stopped working and was staring at them. Mulder took a deep breath and pretended a calm he didn’t feel. “Is there anything else you’re not telling me?”

“I— What— I don’t— Oh…” Krycek’s confusion cleared. “You mean about the people from the old days?”

“Of course that’s what I meant. Is there anyone else out there that’s breathing air when they should be dead?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Knowle Rohrer, Billy Miles—are they truly dead?”

“I already told you. Miles is dead.”

“And Rohrer?”

“Yes.”

“And you.” Mulder gave Krycek a long, hard stare. “You’ve obviously talked to the guys. When did you meet them?”

“Twelve years ago. We’ve kept in touch since.”

Mulder’s jaw clenched. “Twelve years. About the same time you joined the CDC. What a coincidence.”

“I was wanted in as many countries, Mulder. I was tired of it. I wanted out, too. And I needed something new.”

“‘Something new,’” Mulder muttered, remembering the same desire, the same yearning to leave it all behind and give in to a normal life. “So you contacted my friends. Do I want to know how you did that?”

“Guess.”

He scrubbed his hair, wishing he was still the same Mulder that could hit and hurt and feel no guilt. Well, only a little guilt. “You kept tabs on them this whole time through your friends and associates.”

“They were my associates but never my friends.”

The hot sun had grown hotter and he shouldn’t have rubbed his head because his scalp hurt. He wasn’t wearing sunscreen; he should go find some shade. “Probably a good thing. It doesn’t pay to be your friend, Krycek.”

Whether Krycek knew Mulder was referring to a twenty-year old memory of a dark room and a kiss or the even older memory of an afternoon filled with many kisses, he said nothing other than, “So, yes, I hired them to erase as much of me as they could.”

“Does the CDC know who you used to be?”

“Why do you think they hired me, Mulder?” Krycek shifted, turning to face Mulder. “What do you think I was doing all that time?”

“When you were supposed to be dead?” Mulder asked sweetly. “The usual—causing mayhem and chaos.” _Killing people right and left._

Krycek shrugged. “Yeah, okay, there was some of that.” He leaned forward. “But when I heard about what happened at the Hoover building, when I learned that Skinner had killed the fake me, I thought, here’s my chance, my way out. And so I saw it and took it.” He touched Mulder’s knee. “Can’t you understand?”

It was such a strange question, a strange moment because Mulder _did _understand. As much as he hated even acknowledging it, he did. It was just… “Is that when you met her? Garcia, I mean.”

Krycek frowned. “I—” He twisted to crouch in front of Mulder. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I—” Mulder shook his head because he actually didn’t feel so good. Hot and tired, he really should find some shade. Or maybe a bed. He shrugged off Krycek’s hand. “Answer the question.”

“You’re sweating.” Krycek peered up. “Did you touch anyone, Mulder?”

“What?”

“Did you—” Krycek rocked back and shouted over his shoulder. “Dana!”

“You said you’d stop calling her that.” He was angry and had wanted to sound angry but his words hadn’t come out like that—they had come out plaintive and whiney. He tried to get up. “What are you doing?” This, because Krycek was holding him down, hand on his thigh and just the touch that was nothing but impersonal made his world rock that much more.

“Just relax, Mulder,” Krycek breathed. “Dana’s gonna take a look at—” He looked up and then said to someone else, “He’s sweating and confused.”

“No.” Scully knelt beside Mulder. “Mulder,” she said as she quickly drew on latex gloves. “Just stay still a moment, okay? I need to examine you.” She looked up at Krycek. “Get me a gurney.”

Krycek took off as Mulder processed: _gurney, examination_. So not good. “I’m fine, Scully. I’m just tired.”

“I know, Mulder,” Scully soothed. She pulled back his collar and examined his neck, then began to remove his vest. “You’re fine but just in case, I’m going to get you inside.”

He squinted into the bright sun. Krycek and a couple EMTs with a gurney were running towards them. “There is no inside, inside.”

“The labs are still there.” She smiled, but it was the worried-Scully smile and Mulder’s skin grew clammy with fear.

“You were lying. Why were you lying?”

“What?” Scully made way for the EMTs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let’s get you inside.”

He’d had a lot of _oh, fuck _moments in his life but quantity never seemed to matter and the clamminess on his skin turned to a chill. He raised his hand—the bandage had fallen off his wrist, exposing the raw, vulnerable tissue. “I’m infected,” he said to no one in particular.

Scully tried to smile. “We don’t know that.”

“Yeah, we do. Thank you, Reginald Evans, Security,” Mulder muttered and then added with a smile because Krycek was there now, striding with the rolling gurney, almost scowling, “Guess we’ll find out if that vaccine is any good.”

***

Mulder had also had a lot of gurney rides in his life but he was surprised by how quickly he was ported into the building and then into a plastic isolation unit. _There _and _here_, it seemed only seconds before he was hooked up to a cluster of IVs. He tried to read the labels but every time he raised his head, the spinning got worse. Instead, he focused on the tubes of the fluid drips, the machines that surrounded him and the isolation unit itself.

The plastic was clear enough that he could see he was inside a large ward. Next to him was another unit and another beyond that. There were no other patients as far as he could see. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or bad thing but it made him feel a little more worse.

Krycek was nowhere to be seen. Scully was outside conferring with a group of white-coated doctors. Holding a tablet, she nodded a few times; one of the doctors, a tall man with glasses, touched her shoulder. Scully was facing away from Mulder and he could just imagine her face. He’d get up to reassure her but he wasn’t sure he could stand. Just as he wasn’t sure that everything was going to be okay. Right now a foreign substance was attacking his immune system. An immune system that had seen its share of trauma.

A flash of white made him turn his head. Krycek was coming around the isolation unit. He’d changed into a white t-shirt and jeans. His hair was sticking up. As he was turning the corner of the unit, he glanced at Mulder, a quick, neutral peek as if confirming that yes, Mulder was still there.

Mulder quirked a grin and waved. The IV tubes waved with him.

Krycek glared and crossed his arms over his chest and then edged his way between Scully and the tall doctor.

So much fun, being the topic of discussion. If Mulder had anything within reach, he’d throw it at Scully and Krycek. Well, throw it at the plastic that divided him from Scully and Krycek. Another probable good thing—he wasn’t quite sure he could muster the strength to lift his arm much less throw something. And that was funny, too, in a morbid kind of way.

Scully had always accused him of not taking things seriously. It in turn had always made him laugh because she knew better than anyone that humor was his way of handling terror. He’d even told her that very thing.

Laughing as a way to hide fear—it was a classic defense mechanism and he was thinking on that when Scully’s summit broke up. She unzipped the plastic flap and held it open for Krycek.

“I’m assuming the prognosis is negative,” Mulder said. The reason why Krycek’s hair was sticking up was because it was damp—he must have had a decontamination shower. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll infect you? I do have cooties, you know.”

Neither Scully nor Krycek cracked a smile.

“Throw me a bone, Scully. You know I use humor as a way of—”

Scully rolled her eyes, her hard expression softening. “Shut up, Mulder.”

“There’s my Scully,” Mulder said with a smile. “So when’s the funeral?”

“There’s not going to be a funeral,” Krycek said. “You’re not going to die.”

“Not if we can help it,” Scully added. “How are you feeling?”

Scully and Krycek were doing their tweedledee act but for some reason Mulder didn’t mind it so much. He must really be sick. “Tired and out of it, but okay. Where are my bunk mates?”

Scully sat down on the chair next to the bed and typed something on the tablet. “We’ll transfer the other patients as soon as we see how you do, Mulder. The ward they were in was compromised.”

“So I’m breaking in the place? Nice.” Krycek hadn’t moved from his spot by the door.

Scully smiled and typed a bit more, then closed the window. “I’ve been told to tell you that you’ll probably feel worse shortly.” She gave him a smile that didn’t make it to her eyes. “It’s a process of the vaccine.”

“Fantastic,” Mulder said.

“You’re getting a full dose.” She nodded to one of the IVs. “And we’re not afraid of getting sick because we both took it last night.”

Mulder frowned. “But you have no way of knowing whether it works or not, right?”

Scully made a face. “All right, we’re a little afraid, but it’s too late.”

“Because…?”

Krycek stepped forward. “Because somehow Evans got infected and if he was exposed last night, then his unit is, too.”

“And if his unit is infected, then the entire staff is up a creek?” Mulder guessed.

Both Scully and Krycek nodded.

“And they’ve all taken the vaccine?”

“We just inoculated them,” Krycek said. “In for a penny and all that.”

“Okay.” The fun hot/cold feeling was returning and Mulder stirred restlessly. “So what about you two? You just going to stand there and watch me get sicker and sicker?”

“I’ve got a meeting in a few hours,” Scully said, “but yes, I’ll be monitoring you carefully. ”

“Good.” He was all for self-reliance but he really didn’t want to be alone in this place with its silence and empty compartments. He turned to Krycek. “And you?”

Instead of answering directly, Krycek hesitated, then looked over at Scully. “Can you give us a few minutes?”

“Of course,” Scully said without pause. “I’ll be in Doctor Good’s office if you need me.” She leaned over and touched Mulder’s blanket-covered foot. “I’ll be back soon.”

Frowning, Mulder watched as Scully unzipped the plastic door and then zipped it again. He waited until she was out of sight before saying, “I feel like I’m sitting in front of the principal’s desk.”

That got through and Krycek gave Mulder a bare, albeit honest smile. “I imagine you had a lot of visits to the principal when you were young.”

When Mulder was young he’d split in two—the Fox before Sam was taken, the Fox after. It had changed him, made him more serious and focused. Something, he suddenly realized, that Krycek didn’t know because— “We don’t know each other very well, do we?”

If Krycek was surprised by the observation he didn’t show it. “No. We don’t.”

“What’s going on?”

Krycek took a step closer. “I’m leaving for New York. They need help delivering the vaccine. My ride takes off in twenty minutes.”

It wasn’t a big deal. Krycek had said as much, that he had to see to a few things. And what did Mulder care anyway? Krycek wasn’t his friend or even a casual acquaintance. Still, it felt weird, the idea that Krycek was leaving and he couldn’t help a small, “Oh.”

“I’ll be back in a couple days, maybe a week.”

Mulder straightened the sheet over his chest. “You’ll miss all the fun.”

“Only you would call watching you get sick ‘fun,’ Mulder.”

“I’m twisted that way,” Mulder agreed.

It was somehow the wrong thing to say. Krycek frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. “So just a few days; maybe a week.”

“You already said that,” Mulder answered peevishly, absently. Krycek had nice arms. Well, he had a nice arm, singular—well muscled with fine skin and Mulder suddenly remembered that back in the day Krycek had rarely worn anything but long-sleeved shirts. Why was that? “Was it because you were hiding?” he asked. “Even back then, were you hiding?”

Krycek frowned and made a move towards Mulder before pulling back. “You’re getting sicker. I’ll call Scully…”

“No,” Mulder said, reaching out, making the tubes dance again. “Don’t. I want to ask you…” He closed his eyes and, yeah, the vaccine was doing its job. The chilled heat was sliding off his skin now, radiating in waves and he wondered if Alex could feel it too, the warmth that had to be spilling out all over the place. “I wanted to ask you something. It was important.”

“Mulder—”

“No,” he said again, trying to organize his thoughts into some sort of order because the bed was tilting, spinning, and the question he couldn’t remember _was _important. “I wanted to know…”

“What?”

Krycek’s voice, his presence, steadied Mulder’s decaying orbit. When he opened his eyes, the world had stopped spinning and Krycek was closer, close enough to see the wrinkles on his shirt and the stress marks around his mouth. “Your little girl—what was her name?” Mulder thought that wasn’t the question he’d wanted to ask, but whatever, it was out, the words ringing in his ears.

Krycek’s eyes had widened with surprise. He recovered but only barely, his eyes mirroring a bleak pain. “Rosa. Her name was Rosa, but I called her Rosalita.”

“‘Rosalita,’” Mulder murmured. “Pretty.”

“Dana told you, didn’t she?”

Mulder nodded; the isolation unit nodded, too. “She told me she got sick. Your daughter, I mean.” He touched his chest. “I’m sorry.”

Alex swallowed hard. “Thanks,” he managed, the simple word guttural and harsh as if it actually had hurt to say it.

“Do you have a picture?”

Krycek didn’t move.

Even in his hollow daze, Mulder realized his mistake and he backtracked, “It’s okay. I don’t carry a picture of William so I—”

Krycek got out his cell. He thumbed through the screen and then held the phone up.

Slowly, Mulder leaned forward. He was expecting a miniature Krycek or maybe Garcia but the smiling child was fair-haired. She was holding a drawing up to the camera, her expression joyful. But yeah, his initial assessment had been wrong, too, because there was Krycek was in her square chin and beautiful eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said again and this time he meant it, this time he let himself feel it. “It must have been hell.”

Alex put away the phone, but not before glancing at the image. “Mulder—”

“Are you going to try again?” And shit, he really needed to do what Scully had ordered and just shut up because he hadn’t meant to ask that either.

But Alex just bent his lips in a faint, raw smile and said, “No, there’s no need.”

“Why?”

“I’ve done things, Mulder,” Krycek said slowly. “Things even you don’t know about. When Rosa was born, she changed everything. Just by being there, she made me—” He cleared his throat. “As trite and stupid as it sounds, she was my redemption.”

Mulder relaxed back into the pillows. _Redemption, _he thought. Redemption. Scully had been that for him. So had William. “I wished I could have met her.”

Alex looked up. “Me, too.”

“You better go,” Mulder said, his voice sounding as dull as his heart felt. “Twenty minutes, right?”

“Yeah.” Alex turned to go and then stopped. Slowly, as if all his muscles had hardened to stone, he turned back around and murmured, “Mulder?”

“Yes?”

“I have to know. That day…” Alex licked his lips. “That day after Scully was abducted, you asked me to stay and I said I couldn’t. Do you remember?”

Mulder wanted to snarl but couldn’t because he was so weak and, yeah, having an eidetic memory really sucked. “Of course, I do.” In that instant, as if it had been lying in wait the whole time, the memory crawled out of its tomb and the hours played back, one flashing image after another:

_Skinner saying: ‘Make sure he gets home’ _and then, _the odd feeling of traveling the wrong direction in the morning traffic, not wanting to get out of the car when Alex pulls up in front of Hegel Place. Sitting there until Alex says, ‘I’ll go in with you.’_

_…unable to fit the key in the lock, almost grateful when Alex reaches around and does it for him. Standing in the middle of the apartment, at a stop because it was his fault. She was gone and it was his…_

_…Completely misunderstanding Alex’s motivation when he comes from behind and says, ‘Let me help you,’ in that deep, sultry voice of his. Turning, arms up, realizing too late that Alex meant to help him with his jacket, but unable to stop the kiss that was almost instinct. His embarrassment when he realizes his mistake. Embarrassment that turns to shock and electric lust when Alex stills and then lunges…_

_Fucking on the couch, clothes only half off, Alex on top, heavy and perfect. Mulder even mumbles that into Alex’s neck right before he comes, ‘You’re perfect,’ and, ‘Thank you,’ because he’d forgotten. For a brief span of time, he’d forgotten and if that wasn’t a blessing…_

_And then, an hour later after they shove papers and files and books off the bed, they’re at it again, this time naked with Mulder on his belly, his face pressed into the sheets as Alex fucks him but so gently. When they’re done and their breath is slow and normal, Alex slides out; he starts to get up. _

_Mulder grips his hand and says, “No,” and then, “Can you stay?” His eyes are closed and his body still singing, but he can feel it, Alex’s hesitation. _

_‘I can’t,” Alex says. “Skinner is expecting that report.’ _

_‘Okay,’ he says even though it’s not. He doesn’t want to be alone. Being alone means thinking and thinking means thinking of _her_, under that maniac’s thumb, lost and terrified. So, okay, only not okay because there’s nothing else he can say._

_It’s later, right before he boxes up the memories and buries them deep does he realize that the sex wasn’t happenstance but a carefully planned scheme to break him into so many pieces he’ll never be able to find himself again and the anger forms into something new, something diamond-hard. He will never forget. He will never forgive…_

It was all there, fresh and stark as if newly minted, the pain of betrayal that had transformed the thing that had almost been joy. It was the latter that made him say, “What about it?” but it was the former that colored his voice black.

Alex must have heard both because he shifted from foot to foot. “What would it have meant to you?”

It was fever, not anger, that was burning him up; Mulder was sure of it. “You ask me that now?” He gestured to the bed, the isolation units. “_Now?”_

Alex tipped his head as if readying himself for the blow. “I know, but I have to. I have to know before I—”

_Before I go. Before you die. Before I die. _It was always one thing or another with Mulder’s relationships but he would never have expected this—that he would ever again accept Krycek excuses, that he would even listen. “It wasn’t the right time,” he finally said, feeling old and weary.

“Because of who I was back then?”

“Yes.” His affirmation had hurt—Mulder saw it in the slight tightening of Alex’s fingers and eyes. He was so fucking tired of pain, causing it and feeling it, and so he added, “And because of who _I _was back then. I wasn’t over her.”

Alex blinked. And then again, a swift flick of his ridiculously long eyelashes.

“It hadn’t helped that less than twenty-four hours later I learned you were an assassin for hire.” Mulder forced a smirk. “At the time I just counted myself lucky on my clean escape.”

Alex actually laughed at that, a low burr of humor. And then his smile faded. “And now?”

_And now. _Two short words that meant so little and so much. “You’re assuming your vaccine is going to work.”

“I am.”

“Then…” Mulder smoothed out the sheet again. It was wrinkled and wasn’t that par for the course? He was in the process of turning into a zombie and his hosts couldn’t be bothered to iron the sheets. “I guess we wait and see. I need time to think.”

Nodding slowly, Alex said, “Okay. I better go.”

“Okay.”

“See you when I see you.”

Alex unzipped the door and was stepping through it when Mulder called him back, “Alex?” He was falling into the waves of pain again but he had the resources for one last question.

Alex froze and then looked over his shoulder. “Yes?”

Mulder waved, measuring the space between them. “My dubious skills notwithstanding, was that why you wanted me to help you? Because of what happened twenty years ago?”

“No. And your skills aren’t dubious. Maybe a little rusty, as you said, but not dubious.”

Mulder wanted one more question because Alex hadn’t told him the truth. But what he wanted and what the vaccine was going to allow were two different things: with a wash that somehow felt blue, exhaustion and pain covered him and dragged him down.

***

Mulder didn’t die.

He thought he would. At times he even hoped for it, caught between the effects of the vaccine and the uncertainty that it was never going to stop. Everything hurt as if he were burning: his skin, his hair, even the soles of his feet. His only moments of peace from the agony, he found out later, were thanks to the occasional pain relievers that Scully allowed. During those blessed pinpricks of time, he thought obsessively about Alex Krycek and those two days, one twenty-four years ago and one more recent. He made no headway in his circling introspections, his eventual conclusion being that he had to move forward. It was time to deal with the Krycek issue whether he wanted to or not.

***

Mulder paused, spoon halfway to his lips. “What do you mean it was only three days? I was out for at least a week.”

Scully shook her head and sat in the chair. “It was about seventy-nine hours, give or take a few minutes.”

Mulder digested that, then ate another bite of the pudding Scully had brought with her. “It felt like a lot more.”

Scully crossed her legs. “About that—can you tell me what it _did _feel like? We’re creating an information packet for various agencies and it will help if we can provide details of the symptoms so they know what to expect when taking care of the sick.”

Mulder craned his head. The units nearby were still empty. “What about all the others you were treating? They must have given you the lowdown.”

“Yes…” Scully tucked her hair back. “We didn’t want to tell you, but the three we were counting on died the day you started the vaccine. The rest were too far gone. I’d had such hopes for them, too.”

Mulder finished the pudding and set the little container on the tray. “I guess you don’t need me to tell you it’s not your fault?”

“No, you don’t,” Scully said, regret in her eyes, in the stiffness of her shoulders. “But I really thought we’d gotten everything right this time.”

“What about me?” Mulder asked as he sat up. He felt fine. He was better, he was sure of it.

Scully leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “You’re okay. All our tests show that the effects of The Ribbon are gone.”

“Then what did you do different?”

“It wasn’t the vaccine itself, but the delivery system.” She nodded to the IVs. “In our rush to test the vaccine on the others, we think we gave them too much, too quickly. Most vaccines can be delivered with one shot which we did with you, at first. When you didn’t respond, Doctor Good and I decided to give you an additional dose but much more slowly. We introduced it into your system over the course of thirty hours, not thirty seconds. It was a stab in the dark but it seems to have worked.”

Mulder rolled his head on the pillow. It felt good to be able to move without feeling like he was going to fall off the bed. “Okay. Ask away—what do you want to know?”

Scully sat up and turned on her tablet. “How the initial symptoms felt, how long they lasted before they got worse, that kind of thing.”

“I was pretty out of it. I remember that I was really dizzy and my skin hurt. It felt like I was on fire.”

Scully looked up. “Other patients reported the same. Funny enough, your temperature was only slightly elevated throughout the three days. Odd.”

Mulder made a face and shrugged. “You do realize that my immune system is not what it should be. Maybe it’s just me.”

“Maybe,” Scully mused. “Anything else?”

“Whatever pain medication you gave me helped.”

“It was low doses of ibuprofen. We were afraid to try anything else.” Scully typed something else. “Was that the only time the pain lessened?”

“I think so.” The details of the days—three of them, apparently—were already fading. “What about from my end? Did I scream a lot?”

Scully looked up, her eyebrow raised. “You barely moved a muscle, Mulder. We were worried but your vitals remained steady.”

“Huh,” he said, recalling only vaguely the excruciating pain that went on and on… “I thought I was screaming. That should probably go into your notes.”

She was already typing, head bent. For some reason that made him remember… “So it worked,” he said. When she looked up again he explained, “The cure—other than those dark circles under your eyes, you look pretty healthy.”

She smiled again. “It did, thank God. We’ve started production full time. The issue still is the delivery. Of the lots themselves, I mean.”

“I thought your guys already had that worked out.”

Scully tugged on her sleeve, always a prelude to bad news. “We did but the news got out. I mean, it really got out.”

“Great.” Very carefully, Mulder raised the bed. He really was better—the room tipped but didn’t spin. “Chaos, disaster, mass murder?”

Scully pursed her lips. “It’s not quite as bad as all that. Except for LA and New York, the major cities are maintaining a semblance of order. But there was another major cascading failure of the eastern power grid roughly forty-eight hours ago. It in turn caused another ripple effect and power companies across the country are either struggling or out of commission. Each state has implemented emergency protocols designed to keep public services up and running.” She tugged on her coat again. “The frustrating thing is even the areas where The Ribbon had no effect are in crisis. The EAS and FEMA are broadcasting constantly but so far it’s having minimal effect. The airports are shut down as is the intercontinental railway system. The highways are disaster zones. Only the small airports and smaller streets are clear and even there it’s dangerous because everyone is panicking.”

“But you expected that, right?”

She nodded. “We did. We just assumed that people would go outside and see that their neighbors were fine.”

“You know what they say about assumptions, Scully.”

“Mulder.”

He shrugged, not sorry for his sarcasm. “You’ve seen first hand how people react to things they’re afraid of.”

Scully touched the small cross at her throat. “I guess I was just taking it on faith.”

“You and your faith,” he answered, but softly because the constancy of Scully’s faith was something he’d grown to depend on. “So the problems are delivery and communications.” He’d been wrong—he wasn’t over the worst of it. The familiar tiredness was back, less intense but just as insistent. He lowered the bed again.

“As silly as it sounds, we just need to be able to make a few phone calls to let them know when the shipments are coming and how to administer the doses. We can’t seem to do that right now. We can’t even order a pizza.”

“What about the satellite phone? I’m sure the brainiacs out there thought of that.”

“They did. They’ve reached our home office but none of the facilities that are waiting for the formula. The Pony Express, as you’d put it, might be on hold, too. There simply aren’t enough qualified people to carry the lots. I had the idea of using local law enforcement to act as convoys but I can’t reach them.”

“Why don’t you call the guys in.” At her look of confusion, Mulder added, “Frohike, Byers and Langly. If they can’t find a way to jury-rig the communication systems so you can pass on the recipe of a secret government cocktail, no one can.”

By the time he’d finished talking, Scully’s expression had lightened. She stood up. “I can’t believe—” She stopped short. “But how do we get hold of _them? _It’s the same problem, isn’t it?”

“Where’s Alex?”

Scully raised her eyebrow. “Alex Krycek? He’s still in New York.”

“Call him and put him on it.”

“Like everything, the connection has been hit or miss, Mulder,” Scully cautioned. “We can’t depend on it.”

“Call him,” Mulder repeated, letting his eyes slip closed. “And then call him again if you can’t get through. He’ll know what to do.”

“Mulder?”

He cracked an eye open.

“I—” Scully hesitated, then said, “Never mind for now. I’ll be back.”

And she was gone with a flip of blond hair and white coat.

***

The powers that be let Mulder up roughly ten hours later. He was weak as a baby and had to use a wheelchair but he was vertical and he was alive. Two hours after that he was sorta wishing he’d faked it because they wheeled him into an examination room where he was subjected to a battery of tests by a steady stream of doctors. Finally, after saying that he wasn’t Jonathan Harker and they weren’t vampires, they let him go.

Even then, he wasn’t allowed any quality alone time. Dr. Good told his assistant to assist and the kid rolled Mulder down the long corridor until they came to the cafeteria.

“Are you hungry, sir?” the assistant said.

“Nope,” Mulder answered. “But I really could use some fresh air. What about going outside?”

“Sure thing.” The assistant crossed the empty cafeteria and went out into the courtyard. “Are you cold?”

“I’m fine.” Clearly designed to keep the staff out of the view of the public, the courtyard was pretty. It had pretty trees and pretty bushes and pretty flowers. Even the meandering path the bisected the square was pretty. He twisted to look up at the kid. “I meant outside. Out of the building, outside.”

“I don’t think—”

“You do know I’m not going to run away, right?” Mulder jerked his thumb. “I want to see what happened to Buildings A and B.”

“Oh,” the kid said. “No, I’m afraid you can’t go out there yet. The investigation is still ongoing. And they’re going to start reconstruction tomorrow.”

“C’mon.” He was counting on the construction. He figured the area would be such a rabbit warren of activity, he’d find some way to ditch his escort. “I won’t tell.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I was given strict instructions not to leave you alone, even for a second.”

“‘Even for a second?’” Mulder mocked with growing anger. “What if I have to pee?”

“Then you can use the bathroom like a big boy,” came a voice from behind them.

Mulder swiveled around. Scully was walking towards them with a stack of file folders in her hands. “Scully, will you please tell Mr—” Mulder squinted at the kid’s nametag, “—P. Foster, that I’m not trying to spy on anyone?”

Scully gave him a look that said she knew exactly what he was trying to do but all she said was, “That’s not why you have an escort, Mulder.” She came over and sat down on a nearby concrete bench. She looked up at Foster. “I can handle it from here, Peter. Thank you.”

Foster blushed and nodded and then left them, tripping over a slight fault in the pavement.

Mulder watched the kid go, “Breaking hearts right and left, are we?”

Scully snorted gently. “There’s not a lot of competition in case you didn’t notice.”

The kid couldn’t manage the door; he tugged and tugged, finally wrenching it open. Even at a distance, Mulder could tell the kid’s face had turned a bright pink. “It’s hard to believe we were ever that green.”

“He’s about the same age as we were when we met.”

“I was never that young, Scully.”

“I was thirty when I started working with you,” Scully reminded him.

“And I was thirty-one,” Mulder answered. “Sometimes I’m amazed that we made it through.” He turned back to Scully. “I’m glad we did, though.”

Scully’s eyes grew damp and her smile fractured. She leaned over and laid her hand over his. “Me too, Mulder. I’m so glad we did.” She squeezed once and then composed herself, smoothing her hair and brushing away a trace of tears. “And no, you’re not being followed or kept from seeing something you shouldn’t, even though I know that was your goal in coming out here in the first place. The doctors are just worried you’ll get hurt. You’re worth their collective weight in gold.”

Okay, yeah, he got it. “Because of my blood.”

She nodded. “You’re building up antibodies as we speak. We’ll need you to stay here for a while.”

“But who’ll feed my fish?”

She gave him a fond smile. “You don’t have any fish. You don’t even have any plants.” She straightened the folders on her lap. “But that’s not why I came to find you. The boys have arrived. They’re going through processing and will be ready to go in a half hour or so. I thought you’d like to say hello, but first…” Her eyes not meeting his, she got a phone out of her pocket. “Alex was asking about you. He was…”

Scully trailed off and Mulder prompted, “What?” Odd that it no longer seemed weird to hear the name, ‘Alex,’ from Scully’s lips.

She frowned, a small moue that was quickly there and gone. “It’s nothing. I arranged for a call at four which is in about…” She looked at the phone’s display. “Five minutes.” She gave him the phone, her gaze still shuttered. “I assumed you’d want some privacy.”

It was right there between them, the acknowledgement of the thing that had been gathering form and strength while he had slept, while he had healed. But it was too new, too raw, carrying the heavy weight of multi-layered shame and he couldn’t speak.

Scully touched his hand. “I’ll be in the cafeteria. I’m meeting the boys there. Langly is upset about getting inoculated; he thinks he’s being injected with radioactive dye that will be used to track him. I thought a sandwich might help.”

Without another word or look, she was gone, leaving Mulder to stare after.

***

If the cure for The Ribbon’s affects seemed to take weeks, waiting five minutes for Alex’s call seemed to take hours. Five minutes translated to three hundred seconds and in that three hundred seconds, Mulder managed to come up with a plethora of scenarios as to why he should drop the phone on the bench and run. Or rather, wheel away. Even just talking to Krycek in the guise of a friend was wrong, bad, and a mistake of the highest order. Anything else was worse. Nothing good could come of it. It was just that he was lonely and the book wasn’t going well and he’d just been shot up with a zombie virus and…

And, and, and.

_‘What would it have meant to you?’ _That’s what Alex had said, his voice dark with something that sounded like fear and uncertainty and wasn’t that a kick in the pants, that Alex Krycek could ever be fearful and uncertain of anything…

He was still mulling that over when the satphone rang. His heart jumped. He fumbled with it, finally finding the right button. “Hello?” he said.

There was a sigh from the other end and then Alex Krycek said, “I told you.”

Mulder’s heart jerked again at the smooth timbre of Alex’s voice. “That I wasn’t going to die? Yeah, you called it.” Even though the cafeteria’s windows were tinted and he couldn’t see inside, Mulder wheeled the chair so he was facing the other side of the courtyard. “Where are you?”

“Still in New York.”

Heartbeat now steadying, Mulder asked, “Do I want to know how bad it is?”

There was a sound, like the noise of a door shutting. “It’s worse than we thought. They’re out of fuel and the electricity is come and go. There are bodies everywhere. Crime is rampant. The police are holed up in their stations. Gangs are running the streets. The city is doing its best, but…”

“What about the vaccine?”

“I handed everything off; two facilities are producing the first lots now. A third is waiting on supplies—they were looted after the city went dark.”

“Have you had any chance to see if you’re immune?”

“Do you mean have I had any run-ins with the infected?” There was a trace of humor hidden in Alex’s voice. “ I can safely say it works.”

Good. And Christ, what would have happened if Alex _hadn’t _taken the vaccine? It gave Mulder a chill just thinking about it. “What happened?”

“Just that not all of the factions are bent on destruction.”

“Stop leading me on, Alex—what happened?”

“A couple citizens helped me out of a sticky situation that involved a group of the infected and a gang.”

“Holy crap.”

“Yeah.”

There was a pause that wasn’t awkward and it came to Mulder that the anonymity of the call was loosening the tension. And that he was just enjoying listening to Alex breathe. Wonderful. “So,” he said, fishing for something innocuous to say, “Frohike and the rest are here.”

“I talked to Byers this morning,” Alex said. “He’s certain they can have everything in place by tomorrow. That was a good idea, calling them in.”

“Scully would have thought of it eventually.”

Another pause, then, “We finally got word: three teams are coming to Atlanta.”

“How are they getting here? I thought the airports are closed down.”

“They are, mostly. They’re traveling by small planes and military convoys.”

“‘One if by land, two if by sea,’” Mulder quoted, and then, because the soft sun was hot and the tiredness was creeping up, he said, “When are you coming back?”

This time the pause was long and painful and Mulder found himself scratching the bandage that covered his wrist. It was too soon for questions like that even though it wasn’t really anything, just a question anyone would ask—

“Me and my team were heading out of the city soon to find a place the helicopter can pick us up,” Alex said. “But we got word the governor is up north so we’re meeting with him in the morning. After that, we’re done.”

Wondering if Alex did that on purpose, if he lowered his voice intentionally because he knew it sounded so sexy, Mulder joked, “Just in time. You can save me from Scully and her vampires.”

“Yeah, I was thinking they might be poking you a bit.”

_It’s too soon, don’t, don’t… _“As long as they respect me in the morning, I’m okay with it.” _Oh well._

Alex breathed a laugh. “Tell them—” He stopped short and when he spoke again, his tone was lighter, less intimate. “Never mind. I’ll tell them myself when I get back.” There was another sound and suddenly Mulder could hear the sound of people talking. “I’ll call later on, if I can.”

“Good luck. With the meetings tomorrow, I mean.”

“Thanks.”

He didn’t want to hang up. The distance was suddenly a barrier and hindrance but it was all he had and he didn’t want to hang up. “Well,” he hedged.

“Yeah,” Alex said.

“See you.” And then, because he had to, because he wasn’t a teenager and this wasn’t a romcom, he disconnected.

Mulder stayed there for the long time, skirting the caution that this was happening too fast, that he was giving in too easily. A therapist might point out that if so, there was a reason. Maybe it was a reason buried deep under strata of concrete anger and distrust, but there was still a reason.

“Mulder?”

He wheeled the chair around. Scully was standing behind him, just under a maple tree. The branches moved in the slight breeze, making the shadows that patterned her hair move, too.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Mulder managed and then again, “Yes,” because there was no hiding from Scully and he might as well face the music.

But she didn’t ask about Alex or whatever was going on between them; she just nodded to the cafeteria. “You better come in—Frohike is convinced you’re a super soldier. He’s threatening to burn the place down. Langly is still complaining about the inoculations. He wants me to do a full body scan. And,” she added before Mulder could open his mouth, “just don’t.”

Scully had just given him another Krycek-related reprieve. Grateful, he said mildly, “Lead on, MacDuff.”

***

As expected, Mulder’s reunion with the Lone Gunmen was boisterous and emotional. Before he could even say hi, Frohike circled him to examine the back of his neck. Langly was a little more circumspect and just smiled. Byers, though, grew misty eyed and complimented Mulder on his first book and then actually hugged him. That broke the ice and Mulder had to endure a long embrace from Frohike and a short synopsis from Langly on the pros and cons of faking one’s own death.

The boys were much the same. Frohike was a little shorter and a little stouter, but his eyes were as bright as ever. Byers also had changed little; his beard was minimal, as if he’d shaved it off and then started all over again. Langly had cut his hair and gotten new glasses. He was wearing a black _‘Joey and Johnny Are Alive and Living in Wisconsin’_ t-shirt and Mulder smiled; same old Ringo.

When everyone but Scully was settled round the table, there was an awkward pause.

Scully touched Mulder’s shoulder. “I realize you have a lot of catching up,” she said, “but the work stations will be installed by now so just another fifteen minutes, okay?”

Frohike winked. “For you, pretty lady, anything.”

“You’re already set up?” Langly said with a suspicious gleam. “Every airport within a two hundred mile radius is on lockdown and the stores aren’t open because payment gateways are frozen until the hubs are restored.” He cocked his head. “Are you sure they aren’t some NSA rejects that are loaded with spyware that will let the government track our every move?”

Scully sighed. “Langly, for the last time, the computers are brand new; the facility purchased them a few months ago to replace the old stations and you _are _working for the government on this project. Observation and accountability are part of the M.O. at the CDC.”

Langly scowled and Mulder grinned. “Scully, you’re getting us all excited with that tough talk,” he said.

She shook her head. “Fifteen minutes.”

Mulder’s grin turned to a soft smile as he watched her leave.

“So, you and Scully, huh?” Frohike asked.

“That’s not a surprise, is it?” he asked, strangely affronted.

The guys shook their heads in unison and mumbled a chorus of ‘No’s.’

Byers nudged his coffee mug to the side. “The divorce is, however.”

Mulder glanced from Byers to Langly to Frohike. “We just couldn’t make it work; we’re too different.”

They all nodded again and that, he realized, they’d expected.

“The life of a conspiracy nut,” Byers said with muted sarcasm. “It’s hard on the loved ones.”

They nodded once more and Mulder nodded with them. For as much as Scully believed, there were certain theories she’d never been able to embrace and it had been a barrier between them. Not so with Alex, he thought with a rush of insight. Everything that Alex had done or hoped to achieve had been _because _he’d believed. Which meant what, exactly?

Nothing really, but Mulder realized he’d just compared Scully to Alex and Scully had come in second—how screwed up was that?

But, he thought with another charge that was almost like electricity crawling up his back, in a way it was spot on because Alex _had_ come first. If one used physical intimacy as the major stepping-stone of a relationship, Alex had come first. _‘Can you stay?’ _answered by a soft, _‘I can’t.’_

“Mulder?”

He looked up. Frohike was peering at him, the lights reflecting off his glasses. “Yeah?”

“Are you okay? You just turned white.”

Mulder made himself smile. _Nope, Melvin, I’m not all right. I just discovered one of the reasons why my life is veering off to a new trajectory and I’m not even freaking out about it. I should be, but I’m not. _“Yeah,” he answered. “I’m fine.”

“Must be all those transfusions,” Frohike said with authority.

Byers nodded and so did Langly.

“Possibly, and I _am_ White, Frohike.”

That earned him a roll of the eyes and a muttered, “Ass.” Frohike scooted his chair back. “We better get going. We don’t want Scully mad at us.” He stood up. “Besides, Alex wants a progress report by seven so we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

“Alex Krycek?” When Mulder was in the fourth grade, a girl named Rebecca had sat next to him in homeroom. She’d had curly dark hair and had worn short skirts and knee-high boots. For the entire second-semester, he’d been in love with her and hadn’t bothered to hide it. His friends had teased him as they walked home from school. ‘_Fox and Rebecca sitting in a tree…’ _Mulder hadn’t minded. There had been some shivery sweet thrill in hearing his friends say her name, in hearing them talk about her as if that one thing would bind Rebecca and him together.

It was exactly the same now and he prompted, “You’re working with Krycek?”

They guys had all paused but it was Byers that answered, “We are. We thought— We understood you knew.”

“I knew.” Mulder backed the wheelchair up even as he metaphorically back peddled, “It’s just weird hearing his name out in the open.”

Byers stepped aside for Mulder. “I can imagine. When he contacted us, we were expecting a monster.”

“Yeah, Mulder,” Langly had wandered over to the counter and was stuffing jello containers in his pockets. “What gives? You always made him seem like the devil himself but he’s a stand-up dude.”

“You’re so easy, Ringo,” Frohike said darkly. “Just because he flashed you a pretty smile and got you that Xeon chip a year before it was released, you think the guy walks on water. Remember what we found when we scrubbed his identity. He’s hardly an law-abiding citizen.”

Langly rolled his head and eyes. “Give it _up_, Frohike. He’s okay. We’ve worked with worse.”

Frohike put his hands on his hips. “Name one.”

Curious to witness the coming argument, wanting to hear more of Langly’s reasons, Mulder nonetheless interrupted, “Guys?”

They all turned to him.

“As much as I missed your verbal knock-down drag-outs, I need a siesta.” It wasn’t quite a lie—he was tired but mostly he wanted to get away from them so he could think.

His falsehood worked; Frohike and Langly backed off and Byers touched his shoulder.

“We understand,” Byers murmured. “Scully told us how bad it was.”

Mulder craned his neck to look up at Byers. “It wasn’t.”

“Not according to her. She was very worried.”

Typical. Scully’s deadpan demeanor had gotten even more so over the years. He’d always been able to read her before—maybe being infected by a zombie virus and being shot up with a vaccine that killed that same zombie virus had dulled his senses.

“Well,” he muttered, too tired for a snappy comeback, “It wasn’t that bad. I lived.”

***

Leaving the boys to play with the CDC’s computers, Mulder returned to his plastic room and slept. When he woke, it was with the atavistic knowledge that it was deep night. He lay there for a minute, drumming a beat on his chest until he decided that, yes, he was awake, yes, he needed the bathroom, and yes, he really was hungry.

He slid out of bed, happy to find that his legs weren’t a complete loss. A pile of clothes was stacked neatly on a chair; under the chair was a new pair of boots. With a murmured, “Bless you, Scully,” he got dressed in jeans, t-shirt and sweater. The boots were about a size too small but they were better than nothing.

Three doctors were on duty, sitting at the long desk in the middle of the ward. Mulder waited for them to stop him but they just nodded and went back to their business. He was almost to the double doors when he realized something he should have before—he was no longer the only patient. Some of the units were filled, the occupants hooked up to IVs just as he had been. Wondering if any of the patients were CDC staff, hoping they weren’t, he waved to the woman at the guard station. She smiled, barely, and then went back to her book.

_Looks like I made a friend, _Mulder thought with more than a measure of sarcasm because he could count on one hand the times that any of the staff had actually spoken to him beyond, _‘How are you feeling,’ _and, _‘This might hurt.’_ But that wasn’t really fair—if he was the first one to survive The Ribbon’s effects, that meant the staff had seen a number of dead people. No, check that: they’d probably see a _lot _of dead people.

His mood somber, Mulder made his way to the cafeteria.

Like the ward, the cafeteria wasn’t empty. There were ten people sitting at ten different tables. None of them looked up when he walked into the room. Interesting. And again, understandable given the nature of the business, the hill still to climb. Alone time was a gift; he knew that better than anyone.

“Mulder?”

He glanced over his shoulder. Scully was coming towards him, her ever-present tablet in one hand. She didn’t look so good. The circles under her eyes were still there but now they were black smudges. “You should make a holder for that,” he nodded to the tablet. “You can call it the Scully Sling and make a million bucks on Amazon.”

Scully didn’t smile. “Are you getting something to eat?”

He turned to the line of machines and refrigerators. “It’s dinner time, isn’t it?”

“It’s actually two in the morning,” Scully said as she followed him. “But I’m happy you’re hungry so eat away.”

Mulder peered inside one of the refrigerators and then got out a small container of blueberry yogurt and held it up. “Come on,” he said. “It’s your favorite.”

Scully hesitated, then took the yogurt. “All right.”

Mulder chose a roast beef sandwich, potato salad and then, because Scully was watching, a green salad.

“I’ll get the water,” Scully said, reaching for the packaged plastic forks and knives.

“No coffee?”

“I’ve been up for twenty-two hours,” she said. “I’m going to bed as soon as I’m done here.”

Hands full, Mulder started for a table only to be stopped by Scully.

“I need some air,” she said. “It shouldn’t be too cold.”

“All right,” Mulder said, wondering what was going on. Scully was wearing her most opaque Scully-face. “Are you okay?”

She held the door open for him. “I’m fine.”

Mulder stopped in his tracks. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m just tired.”

She wasn’t quite lying but neither was she telling the truth. And since it _was _a little too cold to be outside that meant she didn’t want to be overheard. That was okay—he could interrogate her while he ate.

Mulder sat on the nearest bench and organized his food. He opened the sandwich first. “Hmm,” he mumbled around his first bite, half closing his eyes.

“That’s a good sign.” Scully opened her yogurt.

“What is? Hunger?”

“No, the noises you make when you eat.”

“Scully,” Mulder said with contented affront. “I don’t make noises while I eat.”

“You actually do. It’s adorable.”

Mulder smiled, thinking to ham it up, but Scully still wasn’t smiling. “All right,” he said around another bite. “What’s up?”

She stirred the yogurt. “In a minute. After you’ve eaten.”

“So it’s bad news.”

Scully nudged his shoulder. “Eat.”

Mulder ate, finishing the sandwich and then the potato salad. He’d started in on the green salad when his curiosity took over. He wiped his mouth on a napkin and then put the lid back on the salad. “I’m full. Talk.”

Scully had finished her yogurt. She’d wrapped the aluminum lid neatly around the spoon and then had propped her elbow on the bench to watch Mulder eat. Now, she straightened up and smoothed her hair.

“So, not good?”

She turned to him. “We’ve lost touch with Alex Krycek.”

The words were like a bolt from above, hitting and then bouncing off to ring in the air. He heard it again: _We’ve lost touch with Alex Krycek _and the words took on a physical shape, became a _thing _that had form but no substance. He swallowed, literally using that one action to force his mind to work, to attach _meaning _and— “When?” he managed, his throat rough and thick.

“Late last night. He and his crew were on their way back from New York,” Scully said. “He was giving an ETA to our office when the radio went silent. We haven’t been able to get through. It could be a normal system’s malfunction, of course, but given the country’s fragile state…” She shrugged.

“Where were they?”

“Somewhere south of DC. At least, that’s what Byers and Langly estimated. Langly’s trying to get more accurate data.”

“The guys are on it?” It had gotten colder; Mulder’s breath now came in white vapor.

“Byer’s and Frohike are working with the CDC’s people. They’re trying to contact the local authorities. Langly wants to borrow a helicopter so he can fly up there. He says it’s his duty.”

“What?”

Scully nodded. “He’s insisting. In exchange, he’ll show the CDC’s techs the backdoors into their systems. They’re not happy about the blackmail but agreed.”

“I want to go with him.”

Scully raised her eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” He shouldn’t be feeling this feeling. Like everything else, it was too soon, too much. After all, he barely knew the real Alex Krycek; even a small amount of grief was inappropriate. Still, it was there, a familiar pain waiting around a familiar corner, dull and tentative but… _Alex, don’t do this to me. _“I want to go.”

“Even given your own fragile state, Mulder, you can’t.”

“And you can’t keep me here.” There was a noise, a harsh crunching sound and he looked down; he’d flattened the plastic salad container. “You don’t need me anymore. You’ve got a whole room full of test subjects.”

“Muld—”

He interrupted her with a harsh, “Why?”

Scully sat back and raised her eyebrow as if taken aback by his anger. “What do you mean?”

“Why are you telling me this, Scully? You could have waited until morning. Hell,” he added with a bitter laugh, “you could have just lied like you did for the last twelve months.”

“I—”

“It’s because you know—” He shook his head as if that would make this easier, better. “It’s because you know,” he repeated and this time his voice was flat and dead.

“I didn’t,” Scully answered slowly. “Not exactly.”

Focused on the ruined salad container, Mulder asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I knew about Alex, about how he felt. I—” She cleared her throat. “It wasn’t until later that I realized…”

He couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing and he looked up, a mean smile on his lips. “So this was all some sort of set up? You’re my own personal Grindr?”

“No!” Scully said, her voice quick and surprised. “It wasn’t like that, Mulder. Truly.”

He nodded, accepting her words because her surprise wasn’t a lie. “So when did you know?”

“How you felt about Alex Krycek?” She crossed her arms. “Honestly, it was only recently. I always knew how much you hated him and given his actions, I understood.”

“But then?”

“But then he and I met again and we talked and it got me thinking.”

Neck stiff, body stiff, Mulder turned to Scully. “About?”

Scully raised one shoulder. “About a lot of things. He let it slip that he knew when you quit the X-files, when we got married. I’m not sure if it was intentional, the slip-ups, but…” She wouldn’t—or couldn’t—meet Mulder’s eyes. “He knew when you moved that first time, after we had split up. He’d read your books. I finally confronted him on it. I asked him if he was spying on you. He just said it was a good idea to keep your enemies close, but I could tell…”

Scully smiled a bare, sad smile. “Last week when I found out he had the address to your new place, I started thinking about the past, about your actions and reactions. And about his. I never understood why he tried to help you all those times, why you took him to Russia with you. You professed to hate him so much. You didn’t trust him, but you took him on a dangerous mission and I… Even though the charges might not have stuck, you could have arrested him so many times and you never did. I could have, too, of course. That was an eye-opener.”

She cleared her throat again and turned to meet his gaze. “And then I find out that you had visions of him while incarcerated at Mount Weather and that there had been an— An incident between the two of you after I was abducted. So many things made sense. You, him…” At Mulder’s stunned shock, she gave him an apologetic twist of her lips. “I overheard you that night in the car. And there are intercoms in all the isolation units. I should have warned you. When I realized what was going on, I sent everyone away and turned off the recorder. I was the only one who heard the rest of it.”

“So you could spy on us?”

Scully’s lips tightened. “So I could be there if you needed me. You were very, very sick. ”

Mulder put the ruined container on the bench. “I guess I should thank you.”

Scully laid her hand on his arm. “Mulder—”

He shook off her touch. “What do you want me to say, Scully? That this is coming out of left field? That I had no idea any of this—” He ground to a halt, the words burning his throat. “What do you want me to say?”

She gave him another sad smile. “I don’t want you to say anything you don’t feel comfortable saying, Mulder. I just wanted you to know—given tonight’s news—that I’m here for you if you want to talk.”

He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to curl up in a dark room and hide away from the knowledge that, yes, she knew. She knew and he hadn’t, not really. “It wasn’t an affair,” he managed. “It was after you were taken and I was so—” He shook his head and repeated in a low voice, “It wasn’t an affair.”

“I know.”

“And there’s nothing between us now.” He gave a little laugh. “Is it too soon to say that it looks like there never will be?”

Scully’s mouth turned down. “Mulder—”

He stood up so fast that his head literally spun. Using the bench for balance, he waited until the dizziness had passed before saying, “You’ve got other test subjects. You don’t me. I’m going and then I’m going home.”

Scully stood up as well. “I don’t think they’ll let you.”

Mulder turned on her, his height and anger useless weapons. “Then make them, because I swear, Scully, I will not stay—”

She touched his arm again, stopping his words. “All right,” she said. “All right. I’ll tell them that this is something you need to do. They’ll probably insist on an escort.”

“Like I care about that.”

“All right,” she said for the third time. “Give me an hour. I’ll get you when things are arranged.”

“I’m staying out here.”

“It’s freezing. You should—”

“Scully.” Mulder ran his fingers through his hair, tugging on the ends, using the pain as a focal point. He needed to be away from the plastic and the scent of bleach and the figurative stench of death. “I can’t go back to that room. Not now.”

“Okay.” She actually patted his arm. “But come to my temporary office. The sofa’s comfortable and the room is warm.”

Hoping it wasn’t a ploy to get him to stay, Mulder nodded and picked up his salad.

***

A shower, a shave, and three hours later—hours spent pretending to sleep while his mind twisted and turned—Mulder was more than grateful when Frohike and Byers showed up at Scully’s door. Scully was nowhere to be seen. “We ready to go?”

Frohike nodded. “Langly is waiting for you outside. We couldn’t talk him out of it.” He shrugged and looked up at Byers.

On cue, Byers added, “They couldn’t get a helicopter so you’re driving. It will take a day or so to get up there, depending on the traffic conditions. We’ve found what we think is the helicopter’s signal but it’s intermittent and might be false data.”

Byers glanced at Frohike and Frohike shrugged. There was something about the exchange, a silent, _‘What do we say now?’_ and it came to Mulder that the guys were behaving the same as the time Scully had been taken. As if they knew how much Mulder was hurting and were trying their geek best to ease the pain. Which could only mean one thing.

So the next question was, did everyone know or was it just these four?

Well, five, if you included Alex, and Mulder wanted to ask but like so many times in the past week, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. “Where’s Scully?”

“Right here,” Scully said, edging around Byers. “I packed a few things for you.” She sat a duffle bag and a black tactical jacket on the chair next to the door. “Your keys and billfold are in the bag. I got you some new clothes as well as food and maps in case the GPS goes out. And Mulder…” She leaned around Byers to see if anyone was in the hallway. Apparently no one was because she unzipped the duffle bag and murmured, “I got you this,” and revealed the gun tucked between a pair of jeans and some gloves. “The thought of you out there with no protection will make me sleepless, so…” Scully shrugged as if that said everything.

Refraining from making the obvious condom pun, Mulder said, “And I didn’t get you anything.”

Scully ignored him. “It’s registered to me so don’t do anything stupid if you can help it.” She zipped the bag back up. And then looked up at Mulder, giving him a long, searching once-over. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

“I’m fine.” Mulder pulled the jacket on, not bothering with the, _‘And it doesn’t matter if I’m not.’ _He was tired and still weak, but he to do this. He knew it, she knew it.

Scully touched his chest and then said over her shoulder, “Guys? You might want to look away.” And then she pulled Mulder’s head down.

It had been years since she’d kissed him like that and Mulder fell into it, pulling her close, giving as good as he got because—divorce papers or no—this was it. They’d had their long beginning, their brief middle, and now their briefer end.

They drew apart at the same time. His eyes were damp; Scully’s were too.

“Okay,” she said, swiping at his wet lashes with her thumb. “I expect regular calls. When you find him, let me know.”

Afraid his voice would come out all wrong, Mulder nodded and let her go.

“And Mulder,” Frohike said, “watch out for Langly, okay? He can be a little jumpy on the best of days and this whole zombie thing has him all over the place.”

Mulder managed, “I’ll keep him in line.” Two armed guards appeared behind Byers.

Frohike gave Mulder a salute; Byers just nodded.

Not wanting any more because a tiny part of him was urging him to stay, Mulder shouldered the duffle bag, waved his goodbyes and didn’t look back.

***

The convoy was made up of five heavies from the CDC, Langly, and Mulder. They travelled in the same black SUVs as before and travelled, roughly, the same path. They ran into little traffic and only a few accidents. Barring the reason for the journey, it would have been a pleasant enough drive except the escort included Garcia and that changed everything.

Sitting in the back with Langly and sharing conspiracy theories as the morning sun rose, Mulder studied the back of Garcia’s head. In the short time they’d been in Georgia, she’d cut her hair; it lay on her scull in a neat cap. She could have had many reasons for the drastic change but Mulder wondered if it was an expression of grief. She had, after all, had a baby with Alex Krycek. That meant even surface intimacy and affection.

“Dude.”

Mulder turned. Langly was watching him expectantly. “Hm?”

“I asked you if you thought my theory on crop circles being a social media marker has any validity,” Langly said. “Frohike thinks it’s a pile of you know what.”

“You mean, are crop circles an alien’s way of saying, ‘Hi, Mom. Look what I did on spring break?’”

Langly nodded gravely.

“Anything is possible,” Mulder said, watching from the side of his eye as Garcia glanced at her teammate, an older man by the name of Turner. “The zombies are proof of that.”

Garcia and Turner shook their heads in unison.

Mulder caught her eye in the rearview mirror and smiled sweetly.

With a, ‘_Hmm’_ that Mulder could hear from the back, Garcia gripped the steering wheel a little harder.

Mulder was debating asking Garcia’s opinion on who would win in a gray aliens versus green aliens cage match when Turner pointed and said, “There’s the exit.”

“Call it in if you can,” Garcia said.

Humor vanished under the weight of sudden anxiety. Mulder leaned forward so he could get a better view. According to the data, the crash site was somewhere north of Durham, North Carolina. If there even was a crash site. The lack of communication could mean so many things and he wasn’t going to worry until there was actually something to wor—

“Dude.”

Mulder looked over his shoulder.

Langly gave him a crooked smile. “It’ll be all right, you’ll see.”

Langly was comforting him. It was unexpected and bizarre and surprisingly endearing. “How do you know?”

“Because Krycek is one of those cats that will always end up on his feet.” Langly nodded sagely. “He’s a survivor.”

Too aware that their conversation was being cataloged and picked apart, Mulder let go of the seat’s back that he was apparently clutching. “Doesn’t it bother you,” he murmured, one eye on the silent figures in the front, “all the things he’s done?”

Langly shrugged. “Yeah, I guess, but I don’t know…” He combed a lanky strand of hair behind his ear, so much like Scully that Mulder wanted to smile. “Byers thinks he should be in jail. Frohike’s jealous because he’s so good looking.”

“What about you?”

Langly glanced at Garcia before leaning closer, his voice a bare whisper, “I think we’re all a weird mix of monster and saint, Mulder. I could rationalize all the hacks I’ve done over the years as a way of getting the truth, but to anyone else, I’m a traitor that exposed sensitive government secrets. To those dudes, I’m worse than a murderer and should be locked up forever. Some of them probably think I should be hanged. It’s hard for me judge someone else. Besides…” Langly leaned even closer. “I kind of feel like Alex paid his dues and reformed, you know? How much does penance does a guy have to do before he’s accepted back into society?”

Stunned at the logic and length of Langly’s comment, Mulder tipped his head. “So you’re saying perspective is everything?”

“It always has been. You know that better than anyone.”

Langly sat back; so did Mulder.

_How much penance does a guy have to do… _Maybe that’s why Scully hadn’t pushed Alex away when he’d arrived to help that little girl. One of Catholicism’s most enduring tenets was the belief that redemption was within anyone’s reach, even the most vile and Alex was hardly that.

“Kind of blows your mind, though, doesn’t it?” Langly asked as if he’d read Mulder’s mind.

Mulder cracked a weak smile. “Kind of does.”

“Gentlemen?” Garcia called from the front seat.

“Yeah?” Mulder and Langly said at the same time.

“We’re here.” She looked in the rearview. “Do I need to remind you that you’re here on a observational basis only? If you compromise the mission in any way, if you leave my line of sight, I’ll incapacitate you and put you back in this vehicle.”

Langly gulped and Mulder nodded serenely, saying, “We understand.”

Somehow Mulder’s calm irritated Garcia even more; she gave him a hard glare and picked up speed.

***

‘We’re here’ turned out to be what was left of an Apache helicopter and the remains of three people. Resting in a barren, open field surrounded on all sides by distant trees, the helicopter was mostly intact. The bodies lying about five feet away were burned to a crisp. There was no one else around, no police, military, or spectators.

“Do they have IDs?” Garcia asked.

Kneeling by one of the bodies, Turner shook his head. “They’re not ours. Two are just kids. The other is an adult male.” He got to his feet. “But I think they’re infected. We’re gonna need a cleanup crew.”

Garcia tapped her thumb on the butt of her rifle. “Alex must have burned them.”

“Which means he’s alive,” Langly said. “Right?”

Neither Garcia nor Turner answered. They just moved towards the helicopter.

“C’mon,” Mulder muttered to Langly.

Langly whispered back, “Where are we going?”

Mulder nodded to the right side of the field. “There’s something by that fence.”

They crept away, cautiously at first and then faster as they got some distance from Garcia.

When they got close enough to make out what the black pile was, Langly covered his mouth and breathed, “Oh, fuck.”

Mulder didn’t bother seconding Langly’s curse, too intent on examining the scene.

It was a mound of bodies on a wide swath of dirt, three corpses to be exact by the count of heads. Three people, charred and bloated featureless, stacked on top of each other. It had rained sometime in the night because there was no smoke or ash, just puddled grey water and the sick undercurrent scent of burned flesh. Over to the side about fifteen feet away lay a flamethrower.

“That looks like a flak jacket,” Langly said.

Mulder nodded. Two of the bodies had on military gear. The third was, he thought, a woman. The coroner, one he or she got on the scene, would be able to tell the difference.

“Do you think one of them is Alex?”

Mulder didn’t nod, didn’t move. Underneath one of the bodies was what was left of a prosthetic arm. Some of the outer material had melted, exposing the metal and plastic substrate. He was going to be sick.

Running footsteps grew louder but Mulder didn’t turn. He waited until Garcia had come to a halt before saying, “We think this is the crew.” His voice sounded scratchy and hoarse as if he’d been shouting for hours.

Garcia brushed by him. She and Turner knelt by the pile. Turner reached under one of the bodies and pulled something free. It was the remains of a patch, the kind the military wore on their uniforms.

“Is it our gear?” Garcia said.

Turner nodded and gently laid the patch back on the body, as if the miniscule weight could somehow hurt what was so obviously dead.

Garcia cleared her throat. “Can you tell who it is?”

“No,” Turner said.

“I’m going back to the car,” Mulder announced to no one in particular. The moment Turner had shifted the bodies, the scent of burnt flesh and plastic had grown stronger. “And then you’re taking me home.”

***

Later, when Mulder reviewed the next hours, he remembered only a few details—a car on fire outside of Petersburg, a road bock near Stafford that looked to be a problem until Garcia got out and talked to the ragged mix of cops and averages joes.

Other than superficial comments about the weather, no one spoke much and for that Mulder was thankful. He really wasn’t grieving or in shock. He assured himself of that every now and then. To grieve one needed attachment and affection. Shock required much of the same. A week ago, if anyone had asked him about Alex Krycek, he would have given some offhand reply about killers that were better off dead because that was pretty much all he’d ever known, the cold-blooded sociopath that had murdered his father. So, all he’d ever known, all he’d ever had.

Scully’d had more of Alex. So had Garcia and Langly and Byers and every other person that had come in contact with this new and improved Krycek—from the few days at the CDC facility, it had been so clear that everyone liked Alex.

There was a pain just under Mulder’s breastbone and he pressed his hand flat on his chest. He could feel Kevlar and polyester and the light pressure did nothing but make it worse. He pressed harder because he was jealous. He was jealous of Alex Freaking Krycek. Jealous that Alex had found a new life, that he had friends, that people looked up to him and asked him for help. Jealous of everyone that had liked him, that had found him like_able_.

“Mulder?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re here. Which one is yours?”

This time ‘here’ encompassed Mulder’s street with its cookie-cutter townhomes and earnest, pointless landscaping. “Number forty-two.”

“Huh.” Langly peered over at the houses. “Just like before.”

“Yeah.”

Langly scanned the street. “It doesn’t look very zombie-like. Do you think your neighbors are hiding?”

“Not them.” Mulder gathered up Scully’s duffle bag. “They’re probably at work. It is Wednesday, after all.” He got out of the car.

He didn’t bother saying goodbye to Garcia or Turner. They could think him rude; he didn’t care. Langly, however, was another story and he turned and held out his hand. “Thanks for letting me tag along. See you when I see you.”

Silently, Langly shook Mulder’s hand.

Mulder got out and crossed the street. He was pushing the gate open when a loud, “Hey! Wait up!” made him turn around.

Langly scrambled out of the car and ran up the sidewalk. He started talking before he stopped running, “So, listen, I know I promised Byers and Scully I wouldn’t tell you this but me and Frohike thought you should know…” He glanced over his shoulder and then added in a stage whisper, “Do you know about Scully and Skinner?”

“No. What about them?”

“They’re a thing, man. They’ve been dating for about a year.”

How many epiphanies was this? The third or fourth? Although it wasn’t really an epiphany because he’d been pretty sure that Scully was seeing someone. “Why didn’t Scully and Byers want me to know?”

Langly adjusted his glasses. “They said you’ve had a tough year and they didn’t want to make it worse. They thought you’d be jealous.”

Mulder nodded. It made perfect sense; he could almost hear Scully’s soft voice as she explained her reasons.

“Are you mad?”

“What?” Mulder’s smile was wan. “No, I’m not mad.”

“Are you jealous?”

“No.” He wasn’t. Like before, his only feeling was a weird relief. Skinner would make Scully happy; he’d keep her safe. She in turn would do the same. “No, it has a nice symmetry, doesn’t it?”

“I said the same thing.” Langly nodded, giving Mulder an unexpectedly sweet smile. “Except I said ‘balance.’”

The next question, of course, was why was Langly telling him about Scully _now, _but he knew the answer. And since it didn’t matter anymore and he really didn’t want to talk about his non-thing with an ex-spy slash ex-assassin, he just held out his hand one more time. “Thanks, Richard,” he said, using Langly’s real name for the first time in a long time.

But, instead of a handshake, he got a lightning-quick hug that rocked him back on his heels. And then Langly was gone, hurrying down the sidewalk, his thin hair bouncing as he jogged.

***

Like the street and the townhome, Mulder’s door was exactly the same as his neighbors—wood painted red with an arched glass inset. Today, however, there was a rectangular sheet of paper taped to the wood. At the top of the notice was a Federal seal; along the bottom was a line of logos including the CDC’s and FEMA’s. He ripped the sheet off the door and read:

_Citizen’s Alert_

_The Federal and Local Governments have issued a Citizen’s Alert. Due to a meteorological event, your area is under quarantine. There is no need for alarm. Your local emergency services and police departments are aware of the event and are taking action. We advise you to stay inside and keep your doors locked. If, for whatever reason, you do need to go out, please avoid contact with anyone, especially if they appear to have a bad sunburn._

Mulder scanned the rest, noting that there were no phone numbers or email addresses, just a couple website URLs. URLs that people couldn’t use until their internet access came back online. Typical. The letter was vague enough that it provided no real information and vague enough to be terrifying.

Wondering if any of his neighbors were out hunting down any poor soul that had gotten a little too much April sun, he muttered, “‘Meteorological event’” and went inside and locked the door.

***

There was a pile of mail on the floor. Mulder kicked the pile to the side and made it as far as the end of his foyer before stopping. He dropped the bag. It landed with a dull clunk. He’d forgotten to give the gun back. Oh, well. He’d return it to Scully at some point, once he knew for sure it was safe out there.

Mulder glanced around. He really did like this place. Unlike his old apartment or the house he’d shared with Scully, the townhome had a lot of light. It streamed in through the rear French doors to spread bright yellow across the room. It did, unfortunately have the unintended effect of making him feel even worse because the last thing he wanted was brightness.

He wanted the pitch black of night, closed curtains and closed doors. He wanted to sleep for days and days and days…

“Jesus,” he muttered because he wasn’t seventeen and the high school quarterback hadn’t just dumped him.

Ignoring the waiting mail and the rumble of his stomach, Mulder went into the living room. He flipped the switch to the overhead lights. They came on as normal. Everything else was the same as when he’d left. The sofa was askew, the books and files he always kept on the coffee table were on the floor. Weird to think that only seven days ago his biggest concern was the book and boredom. Seven days ago he’d learned the country was just a bit more messed up than it had been before. Seven days ago a ghost had appeared and turned his life upside down.

It would make a good intro to a book and he felt a tingle of excitement and interest as the words began to form. He’d need to get clearance and approvals but he was fairly certain it wouldn’t be a problem. It wasn’t like there were any secrets to hide now that the walking dead were literally out there walking the streets.

Of course…

Of course, it was little ghoulish to be thinking of capitalizing on the situation. The country wasn’t out of the woods, not by a long shot. And then there was the wisdom of exposing the identity of certain people, people like Alex and Scully and the guys.

Mulder wandered over to the window to look out the window where the walking dead _weren’t _literally walking the streets and muttered, “Screw it,” suddenly exhausted. He’d think about it tomorrow or the next day. It was always good to let ideas percolate and interest or not, he just wasn’t in the mood to write.

He pulled off his borrowed jacket and boots and lay down on the sofa. He liked this sofa, too. It wasn’t leather and the floral pattern was a bit much, but the cushions were firm and the length was perfect. Turning on his side, curling around the pillow, he closed his eyes and tried not to think.

***

Mulder slept. Hard and without dreams, waking at the sound of a dog barking some distance away. He rubbed his face. It was dark, but it was the kind of darkness that said late evening not early morning. Forgetting he no longer had a watch, he looked at his wrist. That was one more thing he was going to need—a watch, a leather jacket, and boots that didn’t pinch.

He was trying to figure whether he was hungry enough to actually get up when something, a whisper of a noise, made him freeze. Heart racing, already thinking, _‘Oh, no, not again,’ _he raised up on one elbow and looked over the back of the sofa.

There was a man standing in the doorway.

A slim black shape lit only by the light from the windows, the man was leaning against the doorjamb.

Mulder’s heart jerked and then settled into overdrive because he would recognize that long-legged silhouette anywhere. If he’d been curious to know the level of his own feelings, he had his answer in the way relief—heady and cool and so very sweet—washed over his face and body. “You took your time.”

Alex breathed a laugh. “It’s nice to see you, too.”

“Were you just waiting for me to wake up?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

Mulder reached a long arm to turn on the lamp. “Langly was sure you were okay.” The sudden light burned and he squinted. “We found the helicopter.” Alex’s face was dark with soot and his pants and boots were caked with mud.

“Yeah. Sorry about that. I didn’t have a way to call and I never dreamed that…” Alex shrugged.

Awkward anger warmed Mulder’s chest. “What? That we would want to know if you were safe? That we might come looking for you?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

Mulder sat up and combed his hair back. “What happened?”

“A drone, if you can believe it.” Alex shook his head. “Some hillbilly tried to take us down with a souped-up drone. It got caught in the helicopter’s blades and my pilot lost control. We landed okay but while we were checking out the damage, a man attacked us. I think it was the drone operator. He shouted something about alien invasion and began shooting.”

“That’s irony for you.”

Alex shifted, turning to face Mulder. “We were busy with him when some of the infected showed up out of nowhere. They were on us before I knew what happened. The drone operator shot Mendez in the head. Meyers took him out while I finished with the infected. They were too far gone to save. We destroyed the bodies.

“Meyers and Wilson would have been okay but they weren’t wearing gloves.” At Mulder’s raised eyebrow, Alex added, “Meyers, Wilson, and Mendez—they were from the New York operation. My original team decided to stay and help so I got a new squad. I assumed they’d taken the vaccine. They hadn’t. We calculated the amount of time it would take to get to Georgia by foot or car. They decided not to take a chance. I tried to talk them out of it. Wilson panicked. The situation escalated and Meyers grabbed Wilson’s weapon. I don’t know if she was trying to use it or get it away from him. In the struggle, Wilson shot Meyers. When he saw what had happened, he turned the gun on himself. I tried to stop him but it was too late. He missed his aim and I had to finish him off. After that, I burned the bodies.”

Alex’s tone was dry, even placid. Once, Mulder would have assumed the lack of emotion was due to an equal lack of concern. “I’m sorry you had to do that.”

“I’ve killed men before, Mulder.”

He got up and went around to sit on the back of the sofa. “This was different and you know it; I’m sorry you had to do that.”

Alex didn’t say anything for the longest time. And then he sighed and relaxed, his body curving into the door’s frame. “I suppose.”

_You were waiting for me to condemn you, weren’t you? Jesus. _“I saw the arm. Your prosthetic, I mean. I—” He crossed his arms over his chest. “That was fun moment.”

“I got too close to the fire and had to ditch it. Sorry.”

Mulder shrugged. “What happened next?”

“I found a truck about a mile away and started off for Georgia. I’d only gotten a few miles when I realized my cell was working.” Alex shook his head. “Service is coming back on-line. Only a few towers are up but it’s something.”

Mulder dug his phone out of his pocket and pushed the home button. Nope, still nothing. He tossed it on the sofa. “Which begs the question: why didn’t you use your two-way to let us know where you were?”

Alex glanced down at his feet and then shrugged.

“What happened?” Mulder asked because he’d never seen this expression before; closed off, yes, but almost… “You lost it, didn’t you.”

It wasn’t a question but Alex nodded. “We’d burned the infected where they lay but I couldn’t take a chance with a hotter fire.” He made a small gesture. “Our gear isn’t as flammable as normal clothing so I moved the bodies to a big patch of dirt. My radio must have fallen off because it wasn’t until everything was burning when I realized it was burning, too.” He looked up and cracked a smile. “It was a rookie mistake.”

“I think, considering what you’d just been through, it was understandable.”

“I guess.”

“Did you get in touch with Scully?”

“I got through to the guys. They told me you’d returned home.”

“What did you do next?”

“I told Frohike that I need to run an errand and turned the truck around.”

“And you came all the way back here.”

“I came all the way back here.”

Krycek’s tone and expression had never been so opaque but Mulder wasn’t fooled. He rubbed his mouth, attempting to school his own expression. “Are you hungry?”

Alex tipped his head. “I could eat.”

“Everything’s probably green with mold.” Mulder got to his feet. “And even though I’m not the neatest person in the world, those boots stay here. There’s a bathroom right behind you if you want to wash up.”

Alex nodded and began to unfasten his gear.

Mulder didn’t let himself watch, instead circling Alex as if he were a shark. “And sometime tonight you’re going tell me how you got into my locked house and how you’re so familiar with it.”

Alex didn’t answer.

Feeling as if he’d scored some important, yet elusive point, Mulder went to the kitchen.

***

Nothing in the freezer and only roast beef, ham, bread and a plastic bag of limp lettuce in the refrigerator. It was edible but none of it looked appealing and Mulder was still standing in front of the open refrigerator when Alex came in. “You have a choice of roast beef or ham with lettuce,” he asked without looking up.

“Do you have any tomatoes?”

“Nope.”

“Then roast beef, lettuce and mustard.”

“I have mayo.”

“No thanks.”

He got everything out and turned. Alex was wearing jeans and a white t-shirt and no socks or boots. He had really nice feet. He’d scrubbed away the dirt and grime and like before, his hair was sticking up. Unlike before, Mulder had the craziest urge to smooth it down. He tightened his fingers around the jar of mustard so he wouldn’t do anything stupid. “You used to like mayonnaise.”

Alex touched his stomach. “I have to be careful now that I have a desk job.”

Mulder grinned. “You just spent the last week running around the Eastern Seaboard; I don’t think a little cholesterol is going to kill you.” He went to the counter. “Besides, you look pretty good.” ‘_To me,’ _he almost added but stopped just in time. “How did you get a new arm so fast?”

Alex came into the room. “Do you need help?”

Mulder shook his head. He wanted a nice, safe space between them.

“This is my old arm.” Alex dragged back a chair and sat down, “The new one was thanks to one of my new contacts in New York.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Mulder saw Alex pull on the prosthetic’s harness. “Is he the guy that helped you out?”

Alex nodded. “One of them. He says he can build me an arm that’s more responsive. It would mean an operation, though.”

“But isn’t that a good thing?” Mulder said, concentrating on the sandwiches and not the sudden jolt of what felt like jealousy.

“I’m not fond of people cutting into me, Mulder.”

In the middle of raising both plates, he stilled and then said, “Yeah.” He turned. “I get it,” he said, hoping Alex understood the wealth of meaning behind those few words.

Gazing up, his green eyes catching the soft overhead light, Alex had never looked so vulnerable or so innocent. It did more weird things to Mulder’s stomach and he sat the plates down with a thump. “Eat.” He sat in opposite seat.

They ate. Mulder held back his questions, instead watching Alex from under his lashes. When they were both done, he put the plates in the sink.

“Do you have any water?”

Mentally smacking his forehead because he was thirsty, too, Mulder went the refrigerator. “Scully says I live like an animal.” He got out two bottles, gave one to Alex, and then sat back down.

“I think it’s probably more that you live like a man who’s been single most of his life.” Alex opened the bottle, struggling with it.

Again, before he could stop himself, Mulder reached out. “Do you want me to…?”

Alex shook his head. “I’m okay.” He opened the water and took a sip. He sighed and then said, “You still call her ‘Scully.’”

A change of topic that was interesting if only because of the direction. “Force of habit.”

Alex nodded. “Yeah. I still think of you as ‘Mulder.’”

Ignoring the fact that he’d been thinking of Alex as ‘Alex’ for days now, Mulder said, “You’re not calling me ‘Fox,’ if that’s what you’re getting at.”

Alex gave Mulder a slow smile. “That sounds like a challenge to me.”

Lust, sleepy and sluggish, curled in Mulder’s chest. Still too soon, though, and he shoved desire away and fiddled with the bottle lid. “Your new contacts—who are they?”

Raising his eyebrow as if recognizing Mulder’s own dodge for what it was, Alex just said, “Harold and John. They’re holed up in an apartment building full of refugees. They aren’t cops but everyone treated them like they were in charge.” He touched his water, his voice distant. “There’s something odd between them. They were pretty cagey about everything. From what I saw, John is the muscle and Harold is the brains.” Alex smiled. “Harold is quite a character. He’s about five feet nothing and has a back that’s truly messed up but everyone I met says he’s a genius with computers. I think he could even give Langly a run for his money. There _is _something, though…” He shook his head and didn’t finish.

“What?” It must have turned cold outside because the heater came on with a click and a rush of air.

“It’s nothing.” Alex touched the water bottle again and then picked it up and drained it.

And here they were, back to their old familiar relationship, and no, it wasn’t going to fly, not anymore. Mulder took the bottle from Alex and lobbed it at the recycling bin; it missed and landed on the floor. Somehow that one little thing made his anger that much more. “Unless you want to leave my house right now,” he said tightly, “you’ll tell me what you were going to say.”

Alex gave him a long look. “We’re going to have to do something about your paranoia.”

Mulder started to get up. Before he could do more than put his hands on the table, Alex lunged, grabbing his wrist to hold him down. Mulder glanced down at Alex’s hand and then up to meet his gaze. “What did I tell you about that?”

“I—” Alex nodded and let go. “Okay.” He sat back, cautiously, as if waiting for Mulder to spring up again. “It’s just that I don’t know how to explain. When we got to New York, we found the city at a standstill. There were bodies everywhere but the streets were empty.” Alex smiled wryly. “Can you imagine that, Mulder? The streets of New York empty at _any _time? It was fucking creepy. We’d taken a chance and disembarked in Central Park and were heading to Avenix when we were attacked by a mob. We had better weapons but they had more. We also had the vaccine. So, I decided to play it safe and ordered my team to take cover in a building. My idea was that we’d run through it and go out the other side.”

Mulder had sat back down and was listening intently to Alex’s dry recitation. “What happened?”

Alex laughed; it wasn’t a happy sound. “I fucked up, that’s what happened. I thought it was an office building but it was a hotel. Someone had blocked off the kitchens and I didn’t have time to look for another exit so I took the team up the stairs. We were halfway to the second floor when a group of infected saw us.” Again, Alex’s expression turned inward. “They moved differently, Mulder. I’m not sure if it was because it was cold or because the virus had mutated but they came straight for us. We turned to go back down but the mob had caught up.”

“You were trapped.”

Alex glanced at Mulder’s water. Without a word, Mulder pushed the bottle across the table. “Thanks. And, yeah, If I wasn’t carrying the vaccine I would’ve just started shooting, but…” He shrugged.

“You couldn’t risk it.”

“So there we were, caught between a rock and a hard place with no way out. I was calculating our chances with the infected when a fourth party entered the fray.” Alex shook his head. “You should have seen them, Mulder—a guy wearing body army and a tall guy in a long black coat. The guy in the coat winked at me and then tossed a smoke bomb into the mob.”

“He _winked _at you?”

Alex nodded. “It was so bizarre but, yeah, that’s what he did.”

Suddenly curious as to what the black-coated man looked like, Mulder asked, “What did you do?”

“We ran towards the doors. The man waved us on and we followed him outside and up the street. Our rescuers protected us the whole way. The guy in the coat, John, insisted on it.”

John. John the man in charge. John the muscle and winker. “And that’s when you handed off the vaccine?”

Alex shook his head. “It was too late, literally. By the time we got free of the mob, it was almost sundown. John said it was too dangerous to stay on the streets; he offered us a room for the night.”

John seemed to be pretty helpful, Mulder thought sourly. “It all seems pretty straightforward—what’s bothering you?”

Alex raised one shoulder. “It was just— John walked into that hotel like he was expecting to find us there. He knew who I was because he didn’t ask my name.” Alex looked up. “And he called me ‘Mr. Krycek.’”

Stunned, Mulder digested that, thinking of the possibilities and ramifications. “I take it you never met him before.”

“Never.”

“Did he work for the consortium?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

Alex smirked as he put the cap back on the water bottle. “I knew everyone that ever had even peripheral contact with those old men.” He tipped the bottle on its side and began to roll it back and forth, gaze fixed on it as if he’d never seen such a thing before. “You always thought it was a conspiracy on a global scale. It was, but not how you think. There weren’t that many of us and most are dead.”

“‘The dreams of fools,’” Mulder quoted softly.

Alex cocked his head. “Who said that?”

“Scully.”

They were both quiet for a moment and then Mulder went back to the topic at hand, “If the guys cleaned up your ID, how did John know your name?”

“He said he recognized me from an incident at a New York train station.” Alex glanced up, a quick, barely-there flash. “An incident involving you.”

Mulder knew instantly what Alex was talking about. “The Augustus Cole case.”

“Hm, mm.”

“That was twenty years ago.”

“Twenty-four. He said he saw my name in the newspaper.”

_Incident at Train Station Rattles Passengers._ Mulder had seen the article in the _Times. _Skinner had waved the paper at him during a follow-up meeting days later when the dust hadn’t quite settled. “So that means he knows about me, too.”

“He does. So does Harold. They both mentioned your name.”

“Do they know about the X-files?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What about the failed alien invasion?”

“I don’t think they know anything about any of that, Mulder. I didn’t have time to find out.”

Mulder rubbed his forehead. “I’m too tired for this.”

In an instant, Alex’s expression changed. “Are you okay? Do you want to go lay down?”

“Lying down was all I did for the past four days,” Mulder said, trying not to think of the sofa around the corner and the bed upstairs. A bed and Alex Krycek and no one else. _Down boy._ “No, I’m fine.”

“Okay.”

“When everything is back to normal, we’re gonna have to figure out what else they know and how they know it. Maybe Skinner and the guys will be able to help.” _‘We?’ _Oh, well—too late to _not _say it. “So you stayed with them?”

“Yeah.”

Mulder raised an eyebrow. Considering everything, it seemed the height of foolishness. “Was that wise?”

“I had to do what I could to keep the vaccine safe. And the best way to find out someone’s secret is to make nice with them.”

Mulder grimaced. “As you did with me.”

With perfect equanimity, Alex nodded. “As I did with you.”

_Don’t react, don’t react. _“What did you learn?”

As if testing Mulder’s restraint, Alex took a second to answer. Then he said, “John has to be ex-military. There is no way those skills come from anywhere else. Harold has to be a computer hacker or something similar. They live in a building that they barricaded up the wazoo. It’s powered by a couple generators that Harold modified. There are at least a hundred people living in the building. They’ve been there for twenty-eight days and are living off whatever John and his team can scrounge, and…” Alex’s eyes dropped to the tabletop. “John and Harold have a little girl.”

“You mean—?” Mulder asked, not really needing to.

Alex nodded. “Their daughter is one or two. Her name is Leila.”

Itching to know more but for once bowing to tact, Mulder changed the subject, “How did you get the samples out?”

“With John’s help. I told them where I needed to go and he found me transportation.”

“You said the city was out of gas.”

“It is. John had squirreled away five motorcycles and enough fuel for a long trip.”

Mulder sat back. “He was prepared for this? How did he know?”

Alex grinned. “Don’t go looking for conspiracies here, Mulder. I think he’s just good at emergency situations.”

“Hm,” Mulder said with more than a dose of skepticism. That was another thing he’d have to look into—did this John know about The Ribbon before it happened? Did he have contacts with secret government entities or an extra-terrestrial entity? “So you spent the night there?”

“We did.” Alex hesitated. “And don’t go reading anything into this, either…” Like Mulder, he sat back. “Something else happened. Do remember Steve Sullivan?”

“The agent that was caught selling secrets to the Iraqi government?”

“The very same except he’s no longer in prison—he’s out and posing as a New York cop and he very happily outed me.”

“That can’t be a coincidence.”

“He was shocked to see me so I think it was.”

“But—”

“Mulder,” Alex interrupted. “He was caught in the first place because he couldn’t spy his way out of a paper bag. He thought I was dead. He’ll soon be back in jail if he’s not already there.”

“If you say so.”

Alex muttered something under his breath and then he sighed and said, “Fine. When I have time, I’ll look into it. Maybe there’s something there.”

In the past, if Alex Krycek ever gave into one of Mulder’s theories, it generally was done with little or no grace and hiding a separate agenda. Now, that slick indulgence was gone, replaced by an honest acquiescence. It was a little freaky. “So they found out who you were. I bet that was fun.”

“It was okay. We were never in any real danger even though John took away our weapons and locked us in the apartment next to theirs. But this is where it gets weird again.” Once more, Alex leaned forward. “I needed a plan B in case something happened. I waited until three in the morning and then jimmied the lock. My idea was to get a gun and suss out the first floor. I figured there had to be a door or window that hadn’t been boarded up. So, I disabled John’s telltales and broke into his apartment. I was going to the room where they put our rifles when I heard a murmur.”

As Alex talked, Mulder found himself drawn forward, too. “What was it?”

“It was Harold. He was talking to his computer.”

A shiver went up Mulder’s back but he dismissed it. “All geeks talk to their computers. I talk to mine all the time.”

Alex smiled briefly. “Knowing you, you probably swear at it all the time.” His smile disappeared. “This was different. It was like they were having a conversation. A one-sided, digital conversation. Harold asked the computer a question and then he waited and asked another.” He shook his head. “It was weird.”

“Maybe he has mental issues.”

“Doubtful. Other than the fact that he was wearing a three-piece suit in what could be considered a war zone, he seemed perfectly normal.” Alex cocked his head. “Too bad you weren’t there.”

“Snap diagnoses are dangerous,” Mulder cautioned.

“Yeah, but maybe you would have noticed something I didn’t. Or couldn’t.”

It wasn’t hot that Alex was paying him a backhanded compliment. It wasn’t. “I wonder what the guys would make of it.”

Alex’s expression grew thoughtful. “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll have to introduce them.”

_‘We,’ _again_. _That wasn’t hot, either. Mulder glanced at the clock. “It’s almost ten.”

Thoughtful expression gone, Alex nodded. “It is.”

“What are your plans?”

“I’ve got a crew on the way to DC. We’ll rendezvous and discuss the next steps.”

“_‘Containment, isolation, and inoculation,’_” Mulder quoted softly.

“It seems forever ago, doesn’t it?”

“You mean when you came out of hiding?” His tone was suddenly bitter and he back peddled weakly, “Yeah, it does.”

“I wasn’t hiding, Mulder. I just didn’t know how to tell you I was alive without you shooting me and making me really dead.” Alex cleared his throat. “You don’t, do you? Still want to shoot me?”

“Not right now,” Mulder answered sweetly.

“Great.”

Again, they were both silent in a moment that was uncomfortable and comfortable, a conundrum that was the perfect metaphor for their past and present relationship.

“Tell me something,” Mulder said, wondering if it was the wrong time for this, “and try not to lie this time.” Alex drew a breath but Mulder interrupted him before he could speak, “Why did you and Scully really come for me that night and don’t say it was because I’m a loose cannon. I know it wasn’t that.”

“Mulder—”

“No.” Mulder placed his hands on the table. “Don’t. Not now; not after—” He drew a sharp breath and shook his head and then said the one word he’d never thought he’d say to Alex Krycek: “Please.”

Expression gone carefully blank, Alex stared at Mulder for the longest time. And then he sighed, a long unsteady exhalation. “All right—Scully told me you’d signed the divorce papers and I wanted to see you again because I thought the world was coming to an end.”

Time stuttered under the leaden weight of a surprise that wasn’t such a surprise and what did he feel? Shock that Alex had thought things were so bad that the world really _might _end. Exhilaration because… “Don’t tell me that you were waiting for me all this time.”

“I wasn’t. And I was.”

“Krycek…”

Alex leaned forward. “I told you I’d wanted something new. That wasn’t a lie. I had gotten tired of playing with the big boys, always struggling to keep my head above water. I decided I wanted a simple, boring life. Marnie wasn’t what I was used to but I liked her and she liked me. I thought I’d be happy with her.”

Jealousy, sharp and bitter, made Mulder’s voice sour when he asked the rhetorical, “And?”

“I wasn’t.” Alex also rested his hands on the table, real and false palms down. “What I wanted was something old, no pun intended. I just wasn’t ready to face that. ”

Alex’s flesh and blood hand was as elegant as the rest of him, long-fingered and strong. Mulder bit his bottom lip in an effort not to reach over and touch. “Because?”

“Because that meant facing up to what I’d done to you. It meant I had to find some way to forgive you for what you did to me.”

He looked up, unable to help an acidic chuckle. “What _I _did to _you_?”

Alex blinked as if his eyes burned. “Mulder.”

Hitting Alex when he was in custody or cuffs. Watching with sick fascination while Skinner slammed his fist into Alex’s belly. Boarding that flight with Alex in tow, yanking just a little too hard on Alex’s sleeve… “Did you know?” he finally muttered. “Did you know they were gonna pour the black oil in me when I got there?”

“Yes.”

It was impossible. Whatever once had been between them, just a handful of hours all told, it couldn’t hold up against the hurt and betrayal so anything else was impossible.

Mulder started to get up, only to be stopped once more by Alex’s hand.

“Mulder,” Alex said, “you were supposed to go to Russia but I wasn’t. I wasn’t scheduled to return for months. When it looked like you were going to fuck it up, I figured, what the hell.”

“‘What the hell?” Mulder repeated softly as anger once again took center stage. He jerked free and said again, this louder, “‘What the _hell_?’”

Alex shrugged. “I rolled with it, Mulder. It’s what I was good at. Besides—” He bit his words off and looked off to the side.

“Besides, what?”

Alex looked up. “You kept me in handcuffs for hours. You kept hitting me.”

“So, what, poisoning me with that shit was _payback?”_

Alex’s answer was calm, even, “It wasn’t poison, but yes, it was.”

Dumbfounded, Mulder sat back. _‘Don’t touch me again,’ _Alex Krycek had said in that cold cell in Russia. At the time, Mulder had attributed the command to the many punches he’d thrown, the shoves and slaps. _‘Don’t touch me again.’ _It wasn’t that at all. It was a final rejection and goodbye, the true termination to their one misbegotten night. “Your feelings were hurt and you were lashing out,” he murmured, half to himself.

“I had those old men breathing down my neck and I had to follow orders,” Alex answered. “I thought I was so good at making people do what I wanted. I was trying to convince myself that I hated you. The trifecta of self-delusion. It took me years to figure that out, of course.”

“So if I hadn’t managed to escape, what would you have done?”

Alex raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t ‘manage’ to escape. I helped you.”

“What?”

“You don’t think you could have actually gotten free without me, do you?”

Mulder pressed his lips together.

“That facility had more than enough guards, dogs, and wire fences.”

“So you put the truck right in that spot? You distracted the guards?”

“Of course not, Mulder. You surprised me as much as them. But I knew the prisoner in the cell next to yours gave you the knife. I knew you’d try to do escape.”

Taking a moment to digest that bit of information, Mulder’s next question was a bald, “Did they know that you were a triple agent?”

“Eventually.” Alex shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now—they’re all dead and their project is, too.”

“You expect me to believe that all of that was because you were _pissed _at me?” He gave a little laugh. “What if I had died?”

“I would have sent your body home,” Alex answered evenly, “and I would have found a new source at the FBI.” His gaze lowered. “But…”

“But?” Mulder prompted.

Alex looked up and met Mulder’s gaze unswervingly. “But, I think it would have broken me. Not then, of course, but later, when the dust had settled. I don’t know for certain because it’s hard to remember the me I was back then, but I think the guilt and regret and grief would have broken me.”

Guilt and regret and grief—Mulder’s companions for so very long. “And now?”

Alex cleared his throat. “Now, I don’t know.”

“But you had a plan.”

“Not really,” Alex said with more than a measure of diffidence and caution. “I thought if the world didn’t end, if I could get you to listen to me, maybe we could get to know each other again. Maybe go to dinner or something.”

Mulder couldn’t help himself—he laughed out loud. “You want to go on a _date_?”

Face suddenly red, Alex shoved the chair back from the table.

“Wait,” Mulder said, reaching out, quashing the humor. “Wait. You just startled me.”

“Whatever, Mulder.”

Mulder choked back another inappropriate grin at Alex’s tone, that of a fifteen-year old that had been turned down by the girl next door. “So the plan was to go out and talk?”

Alex’s lips were tight but he muttered, “Yes. I thought a neutral location would be best. We don’t know each other anymore.”

So clinical, so organized, so very much the Alex Krycek he remembered. “That’s not really true. You know where I live. You know how to get into my house.”

“I always knew that, Mulder.”

“So all this time you kept tabs on me, too?”

“Yes.”

“Because?”

“Guess.”

They were four feet apart, divided by a kitchen table and decades of distrust and anger. Mulder wanted to close the gap but didn’t know how. Too much, too soon and he found himself saying, “Did your plans include the next eight hours?”

“I hadn’t thought beyond a shower and some sleep.” Alex shrugged. “And making sure you were okay, of course.”

“The house has four bedrooms. But you probably already know that.”

Alex didn’t smile but his eyes grew bright. When he spoke, his voice was husky, “No, I didn’t know.”

Mulder stood up. He needed to move; a little expenditure of energy would calm his jumpy nerves. “C’mon.”

He led the way out of the kitchen and around to the stairs. It was dangerous, what he was about to do. He wasn’t worried about global ramifications, just the local variety because it was the localized variety that could make or break him. _Just ask Scully, _he thought with a wry, sad smile.

“What’s so funny?” Alex asked.

Alex’s backpack was sitting in the hall next to the duffle bag. Mulder picked up both. “I was just thinking what Scully will say when she finds out you came here first.”

“I can do that,” Alex murmured, reaching for his backpack and adding, “She’ll be okay with it.” He slung his pack over his shoulder.

He headed up the stairs. “And why is that?”

“I thought you knew.”

Mulder looked over his shoulder. Alex was looking up at him with a quizzical expression. “You thought I knew what?”

“I told her about me last year, that I was gay. She’s been pushing me to call you for months. She thought it would be good for you.”

_‘My own personal Grindr,’ _he’d accused and he hadn’t been wrong. He wondered if he was ashamed or angry and decided no to both. “Can you do me a favor?” he said as he started up the stairs again.

“What?”

“Can we not talk about Scully?”

Mulder expected Alex to point out that he was the one that mentioned her in the first place, but all he got was a soft, “All right.”

***

Mulder hadn’t done much with the other rooms. One he’d marked for William, the other he’d figured would be Scully’s because it had a view of the backyard and the park just beyond. The third was unusable, being a repository of all the junk he hadn’t yet unpacked. Hesitantly, and feeling a muted unease that he was betraying Scully in some way, he showed Alex to her room.

The room was fairly bare—he hadn’t had the interest to do more than get a bed, a dresser and a lamp. “The bathroom is behind that door. If you get hungry, you know where the kitchen is. I generally stay up until one or two but maybe not tonight. I’m tired. We’ll talk more in the morning. Do you need anything?”

He was acting weird, firing off his staccato list, telling Alex things he already knew and things he probably didn’t care about. But he wasn’t acting weird enough to put _that_ look on Alex’s face.

“No,” Alex said slowly. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah, okay.” Mulder backed up and hit the doorjamb. He winced and repeated, “Okay.” _Smooth, Mulder, smooth_. “Goodnight.”

In the middle of the room, looking completely out of place in his dirty black gear, Alex nodded and replied, “Good night.”

***

Mulder made it all the way to his own room before he started to mutter, “What the _fuck _was that?” and, “‘The bathroom is behind that door,’” because he wasn’t _that_ rusty and he’d done his share of seducing. He preferred the upfront, let’s-go-at it approach—it worked for him. And he liked sex; he was good at it, especially the casual variety and that’s all it would have been, casual and quick, the wham-bam kind that would have left him exhausted and able to sleep like the dead for hours and hours.

Like the dead.

Mulder dropped the bag onto the floor and himself onto the bed, his legs giving out.

He hadn’t really thought Alex was dead, not the whole of him.

Just a part of him, the part that seemed to fuck things up when the going got easy or rough, depending on the situation. The part that took things too seriously and invested too much. The part that mattered.

“Shit,” Mulder said because Alex wasn’t dead. Alex wasn’t lying in that field, the symbolic and literal representation of razed hope.

“Shit,” he whispered again, this time running his hand over his face.

He should shave or at least shower because he could still smell the hours-old stink of burning flesh; his clothing probably reeked of it, too. With a push and a grunt, he got up.

The shower got rid of the stench. When Mulder was done, he wrapped a towel around his hips and got his shaving stuff. He made a production of it, flattening the foam along his cheeks, taking long swipes that revealed soft skin. He nicked the curve of his chin and he fixed it, making a production of that, too. Just a square inch of toilet paper pressed against the cut, he watched in fascination as the paper absorbed the blood, as beautiful nature took its course when the blood clotted.

Done with that, he rinsed off the razor and then the sink. He put everything away and then gently closed the cabinet door and stared at his foggy face.

He knew why he was taking his time, why he was stalling. Caught between the past and present, his subconscious was twisting this way and that as it tried to find the loophole that would let him truly forgive and forget so he could move forward with a clear heart. It was really all he needed, that last step, but it had to be something more than _everyone else likes Alex Krycek so it must be okay_.

Mulder reached out and painted a damp mustache on his mirrored-self. That was the crux of it, wasn’t it? That he needed his own reason, his own last piece of the puzzle.

He was adding a beard to his mirror drawing when he suddenly remembered: _How much does penance does a guy have to do?_

Frozen, chilled, Mulder heard Langly’s question again, he thought it through.

His own crimes were relatively minor, easily dismissed because he’d never outright taken without cause the one thing that was truly another’s: their life. It was a line he’d never crossed. It was a line that Alex had danced over and tromped on, time and time again.

And how many years of erasing that line would it take before it was completely gone? Ten, twenty? A lifetime?

A lifetime spent confessing, explaining, cautious of every step and word, waiting for accusations and repudiation. Waiting for the bullet that would, this time, end it all.

Tired just thinking of it, tired of being judge and jury, maybe it was time to grow up. Maybe it was time he faced the real question: Why was it so much harder for him? After all these years, why did he care about Alex’s ancient crimes so very much?

There was only one reason and Mulder picked up the hand towel and dried the mirror, revealing his true self.

So, yeah, time to grow up, time to stop relying on excuses.

Still in that calm state of mind, Mulder opened the bathroom door.

Alex Krycek was sitting on the end of the bed, wearing a pair of sweatpants and nothing else. Mulder couldn’t think of a thing to say.

Alex said, his voice gravelly deep, “I’m taking a chance here.”

Mulder stepped into the room.

“Because I know you, Mulder,” Alex added. “I know you’re trying to find a way through this. I was, too, until I realized something a couple years ago.”

Two years, about the same time Rosa had died. “And that was?”

Alex sighed and then breathed a laugh that held a trace of pain. “That I can’t care about the past any more. That I’m tired of wishing and wanting. I want to see if that night meant anything. If it didn’t, I can move on. If it did…” Alex shrugged.

So close on the heels of his own thoughts, Mulder shivered.

Alex was quick to notice. He raised his hand. “You’re cold.”

“No.” Mulder took a step closer and then another until he was an inch away from Alex’s fingers. Alex had showered; he smelled of damp and Ivory soap. “Not cold.”

Alex swallowed and then—as if reaching his hand into a tiger’s cage—he stretched out his arm. He curled his fingers over the fold of Mulder’s towel and tugged.

Mulder went. Sliding between Alex’s thighs, feeling the heat and shape of hard muscle. “Langly has a crush on you,” he said out of the complete blue. “Did you know?” He tried to make a joke of it because it had been a while and the backs of Alex’s fingers were warm and they were making him crazy, making him shake.

Alex let go to snake his arm up and around Mulder’s waist. “Yeah, I know.” He palmed Mulder’s ribs. “Are you jealous?”

_No, _Mulder meant to say but once again his tongue betrayed him: “Yes.”

Alex looked up.

_‘I’m jealous of everyone that looks at you.’ _Mulder wanted to say._ ‘I’m jealous of everyone that sees you as just a great guy, a guy who has no dark history, no black past. I’m jealous of anyone you gave this to because if you hadn’t fucked up so spectacularly, if you’d had your head on straight, we could’ve had all this so many years ago. All that wasted time, Alex—you wasted all that time which means so did I…’_

Needing to halt those pointless regrets in their tracks, Mulder cupped Alex’s jaw and whispered, “I’m glad you didn’t die.” And then, after a momentary hesitation, he bent down. They kissed.

Familiar and not familiar, he closed his eyes, shivering at the first touch of Alex’s cool lips.

Alex hummed low in his throat and Mulder gave it a little more juice, a little more intent. _Alex, open up._ Alex did.

Alex had brushed his teeth. Mulder moaned, the minty taste heating his stomach, weakening muscle and focus. He bent his knees and shivered again. Memory returning with a vengeance, he bit Alex’s lower lip because he remembered—

Alex groaned into Mulder’s mouth, “Fuck… Do that again.”

Mulder did it again, biting so hard it had to hurt.

Alex pulled on Mulder’s towel. The towel fell to the floor; Alex leaned back, moved back.

So easy.

It was so easy to follow Alex up the bed, arching into the cool wash of air, into Alex’s heat after he’d slipped out of the sweats, not helping at all, capturing kiss after kiss.

It was even easy when Alex stopped his kisses and then nodded to his prosthetic arm. “Do you mind?”

Mulder rocked back as Alex sat up. “How does this work?” he asked, already fumbling with the straps that held the arm in place. The light from the bathroom helped, but only a little.

Alex raised an eyebrow and his hand. “It’s not a green wire or red wire situation, Mulder. You just have to—”

Mulder slapped Alex’s hand away. “It’s kind of dark, in case you haven’t noticed.” He found the fastener and released it. The harness loosened and he carefully pulled it off, then leaned over the side of the bed and set it on the carpet. He straightened up.

Alex hadn’t moved. Posed as if for a drawing, only partially turned and half in shadow, he was staring at Mulder.

_You were waiting for this, too, weren’t you? Waiting for me to ask, to commiserate? Well screw you, Alex Krycek. You’re fucking sexy and you know it. _All thoughts he couldn’t say and he leaned over and touched Alex’s shoulder where the strap had left a visible mark. Alex twitched so Mulder turned the touch into a stroke, gentle, appreciative. And then a kiss, bending low at an awkward angle to press his lips against the slight groove.

Alex drew a sharp, surprised breath.

Mulder smiled and got his tongue into the mix, licking a long line along the curve that separated Alex’s ruined bicep from his chest.

“Mulder…”

Mulder bit the mark.

With a groan and a huff, Alex wrestled Mulder down, attacking him with lips and teeth, sliding his leg between Mulder’s.

Laughter was the wrong response to this situation. Mulder knew it but he couldn’t help his wide smile, the graceless euphoria that bloomed in his chest and belly. He was happy. Sue him.

“Mulder?” Alex muttered as he bit his way down Mulder’s chest.

Mulder arched and reached for Alex’s hand. “Yeah?” He guided Alex’s hand down his stomach.

“Do you have any lube?”

Mulder twisted so fast and stretched so far he hit the back of his arm against the edge of the nightstand. “Fuck,” he muttered, his curse turning to another smile because Alex had laughed out loud and the sound hit the euphoria where it counted. Dazed, he got the slick and turned back around.

Alex was watching him with a smile; Mulder’s own smile faded and reformed.

They hadn’t had this before, laughter and humor and open joy. Alex had been caught in a mess of his own making. Mulder’s own path with Scully and the X-files had barely started. Neither had been ready. He’d needed time and the crucible of experience to show him how to balance the feather on scales that wouldn’t stop swaying. Alex had needed a child to show him the way.

“What is it?” Alex asked.

Mulder shook his head, unable to explain.

Alex’s smile fractured. “I know.” He leaned up and kissed Mulder, a singularly sweet kiss and then said, “It’ll be okay; c’mon.”

They had to make adjustments for Alex’s missing arm, for Mulder’s knee which decided at that moment to start hurting like a mother until he—

“Stop laughing,” he said, twisting around to glare at Alex.

“I’m not laughing,” Alex said, stroking Mulder’s hip. “I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“All right, I am.” Alex pinched Mulder’s ass. “I just think it’s sort of funny—you’ve been shot, abducted half a dozen times, injected with every kind of drug known to mankind but you’re afraid of a little knee operation.”

“It wasn’t a half a dozen,” he grumbled. “And Scully says I’ll have to be off my feet for weeks. I won’t be able to run for months.”

Alex sighed and kissed Mulder’s shoulder. “That’s not it and you know it.”

“What is it then, and if you tell me that sixty is the new fifty, I’ll shoot you.”

“Mulder,” Alex murmured, rubbing his cheek against the place he’d just kissed. “You’re fifty-five and you’re still hot; you’ll always _be _hot, fake knees or not. Don’t be such a baby.”

“When you put it that way…” Mulder said, the tension he hadn’t known was there fading to nothing. “Go back to what you were doing,” he ordered. “Why’d you stop?”

Alex laughed again and then slipped his hand between Mulder’s legs.

And this was easy, too, making room for Alex, remembering how to breathe, how to dial it back when the pleasure and pressure grew too much, too strong. How to ease into when all he wanted was to be pushed down and mounted and—

“It’s okay,” he growled into the pillow. “Alex, come on, it’s okay.”

Alex groaned deep in his throat and replace fingers for cock, cutting Mulder’s words off at the throat and Mulder was left with just that, with just Alex and all the crazy things Alex made him feel.

***

Somewhere in the distance a door slammed. Mulder heard it then realized why he shouldn’t be hearing it. “What’s going to happen now?” he muttered into the pillow, wondering if he should get up to make sure whoever slammed the door was okay. They probably were—he _was_ very paranoid, after all.

“Hn?”

Mulder turned over. Alex was flat on his back, his hand on his stomach. Even though his eyes were closed, he looked happy. Or at least fucked out which was sorta the same thing. “The labs have the vaccine. What’s going to happen now?”

Alex frowned. And then smiled. “Only you, Mulder. Okay…” He opened his eyes and turned on his side. “It’s going to be a long process. The power grids that are malfunctioning will come back online, the cell towers will start working, the entire nation as well as the rest of the world will start sharing intel. We’ve got a team in place that will work with the media to blanket the airwaves with details of the event. Or, the details that can be given. The focus will be on regaining order because we need the country to start functioning again so we can start inoculating.”

“Inoculation on that scale will take months.”

“At least eleven, according to my sources.”

“So in that whole time you’ll be, what, running around the country making sure everyone toes the line?”

Alex stroked Mulder’s hip. Mulder, as if guided by a galvanic response, ran his fingertips down the hard muscle of Alex’s thigh. “Yes and no,” Alex said around a hitch of breath.

“That’s getting irritating, you know.”

“What is?”

“Your yeses and nos.”

Alex grinned. “Then my work is done.”

Mulder ignored the smartass reply and the grin. “Tell me.”

Alex’s expression evened out, his smile mostly gone. “Are you asking if I’m staying in Atlanta?”

_Too much, too soon, _the internal voice mocked, but Mulder didn’t pay it attention, didn’t let it have the foothold it so very much wanted. Instead he shrugged and tried for an indifference he didn’t feel. “Are you?”

“It’s like I told you—I’m a desk jockey but the job is flexible. I can work from anywhere. I travel a couple times a year, sometimes out of the country.” Alex’s smile was totally gone. “That will all change, I’m assuming. Who knows what they’ll need me for.”

“So, yes,” Mulder said, unable to help the addition of, “and no.” Alex opened his mouth but Mulder edged in first, “I get it. You’ll probably be on the road a lot.”

“Probably.”

“Once I finish the book,” Mulder said, “I’ll have to make the circuits. If the book sells, of course, which it probably will because people love serial killers.”

“They do.”

“So, I’ll be gone a lot, too.” It wasn’t an exaggeration. The year the first book had come out, he’d spent much of it in hotels and airports, radio stations and bookshops. He hadn’t minded it so much—it had given him the opportunity to research local UFO sightings. At the time he thought his absence was putting a strain on his relationship with Scully. It was only in the years after that he’d acknowledged that being gone had only revealed the cracks that were already there.

“When will the book be finished?”

“If it was up to my editor, tomorrow. If it’s up to me, sometime in September.”

Alex rested his hand on Mulder’s chest. “So, four or five months holed up in your home and then another two or three on the road?”

“Something like that.”

Alex was silent for a moment, and then he said, “A few months ago my boss suggested I relocate to one of the DC branches. She said they could use up here.”

“And?”

Alex began stroking the center of Mulder’s chest with his thumb, his gaze fixated on the spot as if it held all the secrets of the world. “I turned her down but now I’m thinking…”

“About what?”

“About this and that.”

Mulder covered Alex’s hand, stilling the too-pleasant stroking. “Krycek.”

Alex’s mouth firmed to a thin line, a stubborn, ‘_screw-you, Mulder’ _expression that Mulder was far too familiar with. But Alex didn’t pull away when he answered, “I was thinking it might be nice to move back to D.C.”

Mulder hid a smile. Never give in, never surrender—that was Krycek in a nutshell. It had been his own MO, too. When they knocked him down, he always got back up again. _Except, _remembering about Mount Weather, _not always… _“To be closer to me?”

This time Alex scowled. “What do you think?”

Mulder answered by rolling over and pushing Alex to his back and sliding on top. He laced his fingers through Alex’s and then nuzzled his neck, grinning as he said, “Well since you asked, I think Alex Krycek likes me. I think Alex Krycek wants to see where this goes. I think Al—”

“Mulder?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you please stop saying my name like that?”

Mulder snorted and licked a line along Alex’s collarbones, his happy mood shifting into something tinged with blue. “I only moved here because it has a backyard for William.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“The neighborhood is just a bunch of families. I really don’t fit in.”

“I get it.”

“As soon as we find William, we’re going to see about getting him back. At the very least, we’ll see about establishing some sort of relationship.”

Alex didn’t blink. “It’s a good plan.”

“Whoever adopted him doesn’t know what he is. They could be in danger.”

“No one knows what he is, Mulder. He could be a normal kid.”

Mulder dug his chin in Alex’s sternum. Of course Alex knew about William, about Scully’s Sophie’s Choice. “What do you know?”

Alex slanted a bland look down. “Not a lot; just what Scully told me.” When Mulder didn’t answer, Alex added, “I’m out of the loop, Mulder. The closest I’ve been to alien conspirators and conspiracies is Frohike and the guys and they’re more interested in talking about JFK and crop circles.”

Mulder shrugged. “Okay.”

Hesitant and cautious, Alex touched the back of Mulder’s neck. “Do you believe me?”

“Yeah, I do,” Mulder said, surprised to find it was true. _Yes. I do._

Neither spoke for a moment and then Alex cleared his throat and said in a diffident voice, “So, yeah, I’ve been thinking of moving. The office in Fairfax needs a project manager. Their last guy quit when he got married. His wife wanted to move back home.”

“Which means you’re a safe bet,” Mulder said, then added, “if you took the job.”

“Just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I can’t do the work, Mulder.”

Alex’s tone was harsh, grating, and his whole body had tensed as if he were preparing to leap out of bed. Mulder levered up to look Alex full in the face. “All I meant was you put your work first,” he said, his own voice carefully mild. “Now who’s being paranoid?”

Little by little, Alex’s muscles softened and his anger dissipated. “Sorry.” he said after a moment. “With my past employers, it was never good to be different—they found ways to use it against you.”

Mulder pointed out wryly, “You could say the same thing about the Bureau—now everyone’s out and proud but it’s mostly for show. Being different means you have to watch your ass in a different way.”

Alex’s lips bent. “If anyone would know, Spooky Mulder would.”

Mulder smirked and then dropped his head back down. “Ha-ha.”

“Hey, Mulder?”

He skated his hand down, covering the smooth skin that sheltered Alex’s ribs. “Yeah?”

“Do you miss it?”

“Miss what?”

“Don’t be coy.”

“Do I miss the daily insults? The hoops I had to jump through just to get them to listen?” Mulder hesitated because it hadn’t all been bad. He’d been in his element, working on the X-files. As frustrating as it had been, he’d had his aliens, his conspiracies, and Scully. “Of course I do.”

“Do you ever think about going back?”

He shifted. Even though the new townhome had a smart heating system, it also had cold spots and one was near his bed. Maybe the house was haunted. “There’d be no point. They made that pretty clear a few years ago.”

“I suppose.”

Twisting once more, Mulder craned his head. Alex was staring blankly, his gaze muted. “You think I should?”

“I think you should do what you want to do.”

“Krycek,” Mulder warned.

“Yeah, okay…” Alex met Mulder’s glare head on. “Yeah, I think you should go back. I think you were good at it. I think you helped people. The Bureau disrespected you and I think you shouldn’t let them get away with it.”

Mulder wanted to laugh. “_They _disrespected me?”

Alex shrugged. “Yeah, I did too, and you called me on it every goddamned time.” Alex cupped Mulder’s cheek. “But there was a part of me that always respected you and respected your intelligence. The men I worked for underestimated you—that was clear from day one.”

“So all those breadcrumbs you fed me after you left really were just to help me?”

“In a way. I couldn’t have you but at the same time, I couldn’t hate you. I just…” Alex frowned and rubbed Mulder’s cheek. “It was the only way I could need you.”

Stunned, Mulder said nothing, thinking on ramifications and revelations. With bald honesty, Alex had just admitted to his version of dipping Mulder’s pigtails in an inkwell. It was weird and fucked up and totally charming. It also exposed a vulnerability that Alex _had_ to be aware of, the verbal version of opening his shirt and pointing to his heart to say, _‘Here. Right here is where you can put your blade.’_

Mulder wasn’t too fond of grand gestures when it came to sex and love. To his mind they were shallow proofs of affection, meant only for the moment and not for the moments after. But Alex had just given him something, something he was going to have to think on and ponder over and—

He sat up, startling Alex. “Hold on…” He found Alex’s sweatpants and tugged them on. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Padding down the hall and then the cold wooden stairs, Mulder told himself that this grand gesture could backfire spectacularly, that it might open himself up to years of pain. But that was his MO too, wasn’t it? Doing stupid things with stupid stubbornness and idiot conviction that generally turned out to be the right move? Alex seemed to think so—he’d said that very thing, after all.

So, yeah, it was, and Mulder was grinning when he got the manila envelope from the downstairs table and a pen from the drawer.

***

When he got back to the bedroom, he found that Alex had straightened the sheets and covers and had pulled them up to his chest.

“What’s going on?” Alex said, glancing down at the envelope.

Mulder turned on the lamp, shed the sweatpants, and got back into bed. The sheets were cool except where Alex was. “You should know…” He raised the envelope. “It’s the reason you’re here.” He unfastened the clasp and slid the contents out. There were more papers than he thought there would be, almost a quarter inch of legalese he could barely read because the type was too small.

“Here…”

He looked up. Alex was holding out a pair reading glasses, the glasses that usually rested in the nightstand drawer. Mulder took them without comment.

The pages were indeed many but he only had to initial the bottom of each and sign the last two. Suddenly nervous and unsure because there was a reason he hadn’t signed them yet, Mulder attempted a joke as he turned on his side, “Make yourself useful, Krycek.”

Alex did as he was told, laying back to let Mulder use him as a table. But Mulder had only touched his pen to the first paper when Alex stopped him, covering Mulder’s hand with his own. “Mulder,” he said. “This is happening pretty fast. Are you sure?”

Mulder looked up. No, he wasn’t, not really. Scully had fit him like no other. More than that, he liked her and trusted her; she was safe, she was his _friend_. But there’d been parts of them that had never meshed no matter how much they’d both tried. He never knew if it was a case of familiarity breeding contempt or something else. All he knew was that at times, it had felt like he’d thrown in the towel for conveniency’s sake.

Alex would never be easy, would never be convenient _or _safe. He was an attractive pain in the ass that would probably challenge Mulder on an hourly basis. But he suited Mulder’s alien-hunting soul, as screwed up as that was. Somehow that acknowledgement made everything all right. Mulder smiled, stretched, and kissed Alex, then murmured against his lips, “I’m sure. Besides, Scully is with Skinner so the point is moot. Now shut up—tables aren’t supposed to talk.”

Alex breathed a laugh and dropped his hand.

With Alex watching and feeling a weird sense of fresh intimacy, Mulder signed the papers. When he was finished, he stuffed them back in the envelope and put it and the pen on the nightstand. “I’ll text Scully that I’m FedEx’ing them tomorrow.”

“I’m meeting her in Atlanta,” Alex said. “I can take them for you.”

Still stretched out, Mulder paused. “You’re leaving?” he said before he remembered, yeah, Alex would be leaving because the world was still sort of ending and personal stuff took back seat. So much for morning afters and slow walks on the beach at sunset. Not that he’d been planning anything of the sort, but still… “When?”

Gently, Alex pulled Mulder’s glasses off. “I told her I’d be there by noon which is about—” He craned his neck to look at the clock by the bed. “Ten hours from now. I’ve got a chopper waiting at Birchwood.”

Birchwood Airport was a thirty-minute drive. That plus the flight time meant they had about six hours. Unhappy, but unwilling to get into it, Mulder took his glasses and tossed them towards the nightstand. He missed his aim and they fell on the floor.

“Now I know why you have so many broken pairs in that drawer,” Alex murmured. Before Mulder’s irritation could take root, Alex touched his arm. “I was hoping you’d come with me.”

Mulder stilled. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You just want me back there so they can drain me dry.”

Alex looked like he was trying not to smile. “Yes, Dr. Good wants you back. He wants to monitor you for a couple weeks. And yes, I’m assuming they need more blood. But Mulder…” Alex’s gaze grew cloudy. “I don’t want to waste time. I’ve done so much of that. I just want you with me.”

Mulder’s eyes burned and his throat ached. “And after?”

“And after, we’ll see what we will see.”

He’d never been one for promises and assurances but _‘we’ll see what we will see’ _seemed a pale start to the life he suddenly wanted: Alex Krycek at his side during the day, discussing the weird and unusual; Alex Krycek at his side during the night, _doing_ the weird and unusual. But if life had taught him anything, big changes were best approached with a level head and open eyes. He’d made that mistake with Scully—he wouldn’t make it with Alex.

Mulder turned off the light, then settled under the covers next to Alex. “I might as well,” he said. After Scully had moved out he’d quickly gotten used to being alone again and it was odd being next to something that wasn’t his own pillow. Not necessarily _bad_, just odd, and he wondered if Alex felt the same thing, felt the same slight unreality of the situation. Whatever, and he edged closer. “I still need to give the gun back to Scully and it would be nice to hang out with the guys.”

Alex slipped his arm around Mulder’s shoulder. “If they haven’t burned the place down already.”

“Hmph,” was all Mulder muttered, but happily because he could hear the smile in Alex’s voice.

Coda

August

“Another?”

Mulder squinted up at the pretty waitress. He’d chosen the table for its umbrella and location near the wharf’s edge. But, an hour later, the sun had moved and his eyes watered against the glare of the Potomac. He put his sunglasses back on. “Better not. One more and you’ll have to pour me into my car.”

She smiled at him and picked up his empty. “You only had one.”

“One is all it takes these days.” The waitress had curly red hair, the same color as Scully’s back in the day. “It’s been a long week.”

“Same here. I’m glad things are back to normal.”

“Me, too.”

“When our internet and TV and cells stopped working, we figured the world was ending.” She shivered, a perceptible shudder that Mulder thought was only half faked.

“It was unsettling,” he agreed.

“Did you have any run-ins with the…” The waitress looked around to see if anyone was in earshot, then with finished, “…zombies?”

Mulder didn’t smile but he wanted to. Yes, the world had shifted on its metaphorical axis while everyone had caught up with what had happened. The sociological, psychological and economical effects were so immense, it would take time to figure out the true ramifications. Still, it was sort of funny how afraid people were to say the word ‘zombie.’ It was almost as if they thought using the word would conjure up the thing itself, kind of like a Tibetan tulpa. “A few,” he said. “They were harmless.”

“Yeah, but I heard some actually ate human brains.”

This time Mulder did laugh, just a snort that he softened with a grin. “No, that’s a rumor. They were just people that got sick.”

“Oh.” The waitress leaned her hip against the chair. “Are you a doctor?”

“No.”

“Oh. A lot of my regulars are in the government—are you, too?”

“I am.” Kind of, sort of, maybe. “How could you tell?” Mulder added.

“It’s the suit,” the waitress answered, giving him a smooth, obvious up and down. “Although most of my regulars would never spring for Ralph Lauren. Or is it Hugo Boss?”

“It’s Armani,” came a voice from behind the waitress. She turned and Mulder leaned back to see Alex Krycek strolling towards them. Alex was wearing a black suit and a muted green shirt; the combination should have made him seem like an undertaker but of course didn’t.

“Oh,” the waitress said, her smile paling. “This must be the person you’re waiting for.”

“I am.” Alex edged in front of the waitress, forcing her to step back, and then took the seat next to Mulder. It was a deliberate, calculated move, made to announce intentions and rights. Mulder wanted to roll his eyes; he settled for a wry smirk.

“Would you like a menu?”

“I’ll use his.” With the same calm arrogance as before, Alex took Mulder’s menu. “What do you have on tap?”

The waitress’s smile had faded even more. “Flying Dog and Shipyard.”

“Flying Dog, please.”

The smile Alex threw in with his soft ‘please’ soothed whatever chagrin the waitress was feeling and her smile recharged. Mulder could practically see her disappointed, _‘Oh, well,’ _change to, _‘Still, there’s the tip.’_

Alex waited until the waitress left and then turned back to Mulder. “I can’t take you anywhere, can I?”

“You haven’t_ taken_ me _any _where,” Mulder reminded him sweetly. Three times they’d met, three times they’d had to cut their dates—or whatever it was they were doing—short.

“That last wasn’t my fault,” Alex replied.

Mulder conceded the point with a shrug of one shoulder. The last time—at a club in Atlanta where the music had been too loud and the drinks too watery—_hadn’t_ been Alex’s fault. Mulder had gotten a text from Dr. Good with the request that he visit the lab because there had been an issue with the latest vaccine and they wanted more samples from patient zero. He would have ignored the message because their night was only that, but Alex, rudely looking over his shoulder to read the message, had insisted. They’d gotten into what would have been called an argument with any other couple and left soon after. It ended up okay. Light-headed from what felt like the loss of a gallon of blood, Mulder had given Alex the keys to his rental. They’d stopped for a burger and ate in the parking lot and then made out in the car like teenagers. It had been nice and sexy.

“Besides,” Alex added as he examined his surroundings, “I’d say I’ve taken you a few times and vice versa. I didn’t hear you complaining.”

This time Mulder _did _roll his eyes. “I guess I set you up for that one.”

“I guess you did.” Alex took off his sunglasses and set them on the table. “Sorry I’m late. I had to stop by the office and then my Uber guy took King Street even though I told him about the construction.”

The harsh sun highlighted the lines in the corners of Alex’s eyes. It also highlighted the color of Alex’s eyes. “It’s okay. How’s New York, New York these days?”

Alex shrugged. “The city is getting back to normal; the people are too. Sullivan is back in jail.”

Mulder nudged his empty glass. “And John and Harold?”

Alex barely smiled. “John is fine. Harold wasn’t there but I’m assuming he’s fine, too.” He opened the menu. “You really don’t need to be jealous.”

“I’m not,” came Mulder’s quick reply followed by a more honest albeit sheepish, “I’m mostly not,” because the guys had managed to get a photo of John. If Mulder were inclined towards jealousy, there would be a lot to be jealous about_._ “I just think it’s weird that John will only meet you in one location and Harold has gone underground.”

“You’re too suspicious,” Alex noted, still glancing at the menu.

“I have good reason to be. You do, too.”

In his, _‘You’re right and I don’t want to admit it, Mulder,’ _voice, Alex said, “I also know that New York is a big place and if Harold doesn’t want to be found, it’s not gonna happen. His kung fu, as Langly keeps saying, is superior.”

It was. Far superior to all three Gunmen put together and Mulder still didn’t get that. Frohike and Langly had written the book on hacking and they still couldn’t find any background on Harold and only a very little on John. According to Byers, they had tried every trick in the book with no luck. Frohike was actually embarrassed about it and Langly was like a dog with a bone—every week he tried one more time, every week he found nothing. “They could be part of a new conspiracy.”

“More likely they’re just very private.” Alex lowered the menu. “I really think you should leave this one alone, Mulder. I know people. John and Harold aren’t up to anything that will put anyone else in danger.”

“And if I say no? If I pursue it?”

Alex shrugged again. “Then you say no, then you pursue it.”

Mulder almost shivered at Alex’s calm reply because it was just that these days—no hidden agenda, no strategy to move the players this way and that. It was a gift and so he lifted one shoulder and said, “Okay. I’ll tell the boys to give it up and move on.”

“You will?”

“I’ll call them today.”

“Thanks.”

Mulder wondered if Alex felt it too, the almost erotic rush brought on by honesty and trust. Probably. Alex had lived in the same world as Mulder, after all. _Trust no one._

He cleared his throat against the overflow of emotion and said, “Scully called me. She said your conference is set for the end of September.”

“It’s not my conference.” Alex glanced at the menu once more. “Scully will play a bigger part. I’m just there as support. I’m thinking of skipping it.”

“San Francisco in September,” he mused. “It should be fun.”

“Listening to a bunch of scientists and doctors discuss the ‘Event…’” Alex used a single-handed air quote. “…isn’t my idea of fun.”

They’d had this discussion before. Alex had been frustrated when the powers-that-be started referring to the radiation poisoning as ‘The Event,’ and ‘The Incident.’ He’d said they were covering up the truth, that soon they wouldn’t be talking about it at all.

Mulder had replied that it was a typical response because humans tended to minimize events so they could deal and that it would take time for them to absorb the impact. He hadn’t added that, yes, he agreed that humankind would probably sweep the whole thing under the rug and the lack of planning would mean detrimental consequences down the road. His mood, rarely bright and sunny, was distinctly yellow these days and a part of him said he might be wrong, that even governments could change given the right impetus.

Change was possible—who would know better than him? He grinned at his own personal impetus, now scowling at the menu. “Maybe you should write that book.”

“Maybe I will,” Alex said absently, adding in a mutter, “None of this looks good.” He tossed the menu down.

“Then why did you suggest lunch?”

“Because I figured that after your two-hour meeting with your publisher, you’d be hungry.” Alex looked at his watch. “It’s after twelve.”

“And these days, I’m hungry by eleven,” Mulder murmured. It no longer bothered him that Alex knew so much about his life. He’d done his own research, his own light stalking. Speaking of… “So, I’ve been meaning to ask you…”

“Yeah?” Alex asked as Mulder stopped speaking and glanced around to see if anyone was listening.

“I was reading the news the other day.” Not quite the truth. He’d been talking to the guys about a massive crop circle found in India when Frohike had asked him if he’d been keeping up with current events. “There was an article in the Post about General Suveg.”

Alex put his sunglasses back on. “Who’s General Suveg?”

Mulder pursed his lips.

“Yeah, okay,” Alex conceded. “What about him?”

“He’s under arrest because military police found a secret stash of porn on his computer.”

“They did, did they?”

“Alex…”

Alex sighed, an exhalation that held more than a hint of irritation. “Who told you—Frohike or Byers?”

There was no sense in turning Alex’s deadly attention on any one whistle blower—spread the blame thereby confusing the missile’s aim, that was Mulder’s M.O. “They all did.”

“We didn’t set him up, Mulder,” Alex said. “We just did a little digging.”

“By ‘we’ you mean ‘they’ and by ‘digging’ you mean hacking and only after you’d done your _own._”

“Yeah, okay,” Alex admitted with a shrug. “I looked into Suveg. I found some stuff that bothered me so I asked the guys to check him out.”

Movement caught Mulder’s glance. The waitress was coming over with a tray of drinks. The interruption, as brief as it was, gave him a moment to remember a few facts. He’d known what Alex’s answer would be. He was sure he knew why. But it always paid to be even more sure and so he waited until the waitress had asked, _‘Are you ready to order?’ _and Alex had answered, _‘We’re going to need a few more minutes,’ _before saying, “Do I want to know why you have a sudden interest in Suveg?”

“I think you know why, but yeah, I’ll tell you…” Alex crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair. “It’s because he was the one that signed the orders granting enhanced interrogation techniques when they had you in custody at Mount Weather. Because of him, you were tortured.”

Alex’s voice hadn’t changed register and he wasn’t smiling or grimacing—he spoke as if he were talking about the weather. “So you decided a little hacking into Suveg’s personal life was a proportional response?”

“I decided that decisions have consequences. Those decisions were his own and he has to pay for them.” Alex smiled briefly. “I thought I handled it discreetly. I could have taken care of him another way.”

Anemic outrage vied with common sense, the latter finally winning. If Alex had ever planned to kill Suveg, he would never bring it up during lunch on a Tuesday. No, this was another test, one of many sure to come. Just Alex’s way of seeing if Mulder’s promise of trust was actually just that or window dressing. Anyway, the old Alex Krycek would have never told the truth in the first place, kneejerk first reaction notwithstanding. “If that means what I think it means…” Mulder smiled wanly at his reflection in Alex’s glasses. “…please don’t. I’ve moved on. I don’t care about him anymore.”

“All right.”

Mulder pursed his lips. “Do I need to worry about any other outstanding debts you plan on repaying?”

“Not at this time.”

A bland response that hid a multitude of future sins. But Mulder was trying to take it one day at a time and besides, Alex _could _have dealt with the problem using his own unique brand of skills and hadn’t. That was progress. Of a sort. “I have some news.”

Alex’s expression lightened. “They signed off on it?”

Nodding with satisfaction, Mulder said, “Almost. I need to make one change to chapter three and approve the blurbs and it’s done.”

“What did Sheila say about the new chapters?”

He grinned. “On Friday she told me she wasn’t paying for them. On Saturday, she sent me a thousand dollar bonus.”

“Told you.”

“You did.”

“What did she say about the new title?”

Mulder shrugged. “That one might not fly. They want to think about it for a few days.”

Alex made a slight moué. “One out of two isn’t so bad, especially since you gave her the bad news.”

‘The bad news,’ as Alex put it, was Mulder’s bald, no salutation of:_ ‘I’m done with serial killers, Sheila. If you want a book on alien abductions, I’m your man.’ _

Sheila had huffed and puffed for a few minutes, then reluctantly told Mulder she’d talk to the publisher. “She’ll take it out of my hide,” Mulder reminded Alex. “She’s already sent me the book tour schedule; she wants me booked on every radio station from here to Salem, Oregon. I’ll be gone from December through February.”

“So much for that vacation in Aruba.”

Mulder didn’t answer. The vacation in Aruba wasn’t really to be a vacation in any true sense. Alex’s bosses had proposed the trip, a nominal cover for the real objective, that of an undercover assignment to Jamaica to find out if the reports of Ribbon infection were just reports. Mulder had said yes when Alex had asked him to go but now he didn’t mind the need to cancel. He’d been going just because it was Aruba and would have no real role other than Alex’s accessory. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to be seen as an accessory just yet.

“It’s just as well.”

“What is?”

“You not going with me—it’s just as well.”

Mulder sat back. “So the honeymoon is over,” he said in his most deadpan. “Is this my cue to say it was good while it lasted?”

Alex rolled his eyes. “I didn’t mean that and you know it. No…” Alex reached inside his jacket for a fat envelope. “…I’ve got something for you and before you ask, I’ve read everything. And he found me, not the reverse. I have no idea how or why he now trusts me.” He set the envelope on the table and slid it towards Mulder.

One metaphorical eye on Alex, Mulder unsealed the flap and shook out the contents. Inside was a cheap cell phone, a mix of geographical charts, a spreadsheet, and a folded piece of paper with his name on it. Unfolding the paper, his eyes dropped to the signature. His whole body stiffened. _What the…?_

“I suppose a letter is more secure,” Alex added.

“Gibson Praise,” Mulder murmured. “He’s still alive?”

“And doing well, apparently.”

“I’m assuming there was no return address on the envelope.”

“No, there was not. My guess is that he’s living in New Mexico.”

Mulder smiled crookedly. After his trial at Mount Weather, he’d spent a week trying to find Gibson to no avail. So good to know that— “Did you see him in person?”

“No, a courier brought the documents along with that pre-paid cell phone. It holds one number.”

“I’m assuming it’s a New Mexico area code,” Mulder said absently as he read the very short letter:

_Dear Mulder, _

_I heard you survived The Ribbon. I thought you might appreciate this data I’ve been collecting. When you figure it out, call me._

_gp_

Mulder read the letter once more and then spread the documents out on the table. He bent his head.

The spreadsheet was a simple listing of names, cities, and dates. Some of the names were followed by one date, others were followed by a series of dates. The maps were of the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. They seemed normal meteorological maps except certain areas were dotted with different sized circles of transparent shades of red. An area near White Sands had only one small dot while Albuquerque was almost one big blot of red.

Mulder frowned and started to ask Alex what it all meant when he got it. He pulled the spreadsheet closer, once more scanning the categories. _Name, City, DOA, Results. DOA. _That didn’t mean _Dead On Arrival. _It meant—

Another chill ran down his back, this one from sheer disbelief. Mulder traced the ‘Cities’ column with his finger, not surprised to find that most of the people on the first page lived—or had lived—in Albuquerque. He looked up at Alex. “Is this a record of…?” He couldn’t say it.

Alex nodded sedately. “A record of abductees that coincidentally were affected by The Ribbon,” Alex said. “Yes, it is.” He leaned forward, too, and pointed to a name. “Maria Ruiz. She was first taken in ‘72 and then again in ‘92. Gibson has been keeping track of her as well as other abductees. Over the last few months he’s found a disturbing trend—these abductees were affected by The Ribbon, even though Albuquerque was one of the areas that should had missed effects completely.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not even a little.” Alex leaned closer. “You want to hear something even weirder?” He didn’t give Mulder time to reply. “They all survived. Every single one.”

This time it wasn’t a chill but a full-blown wave of excitement. Excitement mixed with euphoria and a joyful kind of _here we go_. “Holy shit.”

Alex nodded again. “I’ve been trying not to read too much into it, but if it’s true, if whatever makes the abductee’s immune to The Ribbon’s effects, it could be a powerful tool. It also might be why you survived that first dose. No one else did.”

Eyes blind to everything but his careening thoughts, Mulder asked, “Does Scully know?”

“No.”

“And your people—what did they say?”

“I haven’t notified them yet.”

Mulder raised his head. Coming first before Scully was one thing; coming first before the CDC and WHO? “What are you going to tell them?” He stacked the papers together. “_How _are you going to tell them?”

“Very carefully and not until I’ve got my facts straight.”

“That will mean research.”

“Boots on the ground research.”

_Don’t get too excited. “_Who are you bringing?” _It better not be Garcia…_

“Just you. If you can take the time off.”

Knowing what it would look like, how much he was giving away to anyone watching, Mulder leaned over and very gently took Alex’s sunglasses off. He folded them and set them by Alex’s plate. “How much time?”

Alex blinked. “At least three weeks. I’ve already sent in my request. I told them I want assess the link between the climate in the West and the effects of The Ribbon. When we’ve got some hard data, then we’ll tell them.”

_We, _again, only this time the word meant nothing but good. “What if Scully wants to come?”

Alex hesitated, then said, “I was hoping it would just be us. We haven’t had much time together since April. I thought we could, you know…” Alex shrugged.

Mulder understood that reticence that masked doubt. He felt it sometimes, especially late at night when he lay awake wondering, _‘When does this new life start?’ _“So, just the two of us in New Mexico with nothing to do but chase aliens and drink margaritas? Sounds like a honey—”

“Shut up, Mulder,” Alex growled. “I haven’t asked you to marry me.”

“Yet,” Mulder said because he couldn’t help himself, because he also understood that sometimes it was important to step forward, to make oneself an open target to pain and doubt…

Alex’s expression cleared of irritation and embarrassment. He nodded slowly and whispered, “Yet.”

Neither of them said anything in a moment that was weighted with the future, not the past.

The moment was broken by a seagull. The bird landed on an empty chair and then hopped onto the deck. It gave Mulder the eye and then cocked its head.

“I think that’s our cue,” Mulder said.

Alex got out his wallet. “Are you done for the day?”

Mulder didn’t bother fighting for the check. Alex made more than he did and besides, being a kept man wasn’t the same as being an accessory. “If you’re asking me back to your hotel, then yes, I’m done for the day.” He pushed his chair back and stood up.

“I didn’t get a room.” Alex put the papers and phone back in the envelope. “I’ve got a meeting at nine. I was wondering if you would go with me.”

“Where’s the meeting?”

Alex stood as well. “At that Italian restaurant near the Hoover Building.”

The world sort of stilled. Mulder could hear the slap of water against the wharf, hear the faint call of a seabird and a bark of laughter from some kids on the pier. After that first time, Alex had never mentioned the X-files again and Mulder had pushed it out of his sphere of consciousness by necessity. That part of his life was over, right?

He should have known better.

“Will Scully be there?”

“She was the one that set it up. She thought it would be better to meet after hours. Skinner agreed to it.”

“And he’s willing to open the X-files back up?”

“He’s willing to listen. After he gets this new intel…” Alex raised the envelope. “…he won’t be able to say no.”

Mulder swallowed, his throat suddenly thick. “Nine o’clock is a long time away.”

“It is,” Alex agreed gravely.

“It takes twenty minutes to get to my place.”

“Maybe less.”

“You haven’t seen it since that first time. I cleaned out all the bedrooms.” Deciding that the quiet neighborhood suited him after all and carefully closing his mind to expectations, Mulder had gone through the townhouse, making it a real home that included pictures on the wall, a TV for his bedroom and a king size mattress that had a foam topper because his ex-dead, ex-spy boyfriend sometimes had back problems. “And I got a new mattress.”

“That’s nice.”

“We can hang out and plan a trip to New Mexico.”

Alex edged sideways, his arm brushing Mulder’s. “Mulder,” Alex said, his voice lowering. “We won’t be planning anything. At least not at first.”

Like Pavlov’s famous dog, Mulder had become conditioned to Alex’s sexy, breathy, we-better-get-horizontal-fast-or-I-won’t-be-responsible-for-my-actions tone. The process of conditioning had taken all of two dates and it would have been terrifying if not for the fact that during that same time he’d discovered a few of Krycek’s buttons, too. But it was never good to give in too soon and so he said, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Krycek.”

“I won’t.” Lightly, Alex touched the small of Mulder’s, adding in a voice thick with sincerity, “I don’t. Not anymore.”

So, maybe not marriage but everything in-between. Sex and companionship and truth and the X-files—fate was so goddamned bizarre. “All right,” Mulder said as he stepped from under the shade of the umbrella into the late afternoon sun. “Let’s get this party started.”

With Krycek’s hand still on his back, Mulder led the way across the patio and to the car.

_fin._

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the last chapter for my 'The Ribbon' series. I will, however, be writing a Mulder/Krycek sequel based on this story. My only other additional note is that my Fox Mulder isn't color-blind.


End file.
